BRASÍLIA — In a stunning twist in the effort to impeach President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, the new speaker of the lower house of Congress has changed his mind — less than 24 hours after announcing that he would try to annul his chamber’s decision to impeach her.
Brazilians awoke Tuesday to the news of the sudden about-face by the speaker, Waldir Maranhão, who Monday was widely ridiculed and threatened with expulsion from his Progressive Party for trying to upend the impeachment process.
Maranhão said Monday that he would to try to annul the April 17 impeachment vote against the president, citing concerns about procedural irregularities. But in a decision made around midnight here, and widely circulated in the early morning on Tuesday, Maranhão told Renan Calheiros, the head of the Senate, that he was revoking his earlier decision.
The head-spinning change was only the latest development in a political crisis that has mesmerized and bewildered Latin America’s most populous nation.The practical significance of the decision is that it improves the chances Rousseff will be ousted soon.
The Senate, which was already threatening to disregard Maranhão’s pronouncements, is scheduled on Wednesday to start voting on whether to remove Rousseff from office and place her on trial over allegations of budgetary manipulation. Rousseff is widely expected to lose that vote, clearing the way for her to be replaced by Vice President Michel Temer.
The circuslike atmosphere in Brazil’s Congress — which has recently been marked by shouting matches, protests inside the chamber, and lawmakers spitting on one another — has provoked ire across the country.
“Anyone who still lives with the idea that institutions are functioning is either a cynic or blind,’’ said Josias de Souza, a prominent columnist.
Maranhão had taken the helm of Brazil’s lower house as interim speaker just last week, after the previous speaker, Eduardo Cunha, was forced to step down by the Supreme Court to face a trial on graft charges. Cunha, who is accused of taking as much as $40 million in bribes, had overseen the impeachment proceedings.
But like dozens of other prominent politicians across the spectrum, Maranhão is grappling with allegations that he pocketed bribes in the graft scheme surrounding Petrobras, the national oil company.
Rousseff is not accused of stealing for her own personal enrichment. Instead, she faces accusations that she borrowed money from state banks to plug budget holes, masking the depths of Brazil’s economic troubles to bolster her reelection prospects.
In a last-ditch effort to prevent her from being ousted, José Eduardo Cardozo, the solicitor general in Rousseff’s government, said on Tuesday that he was asking the Supreme Court to rule on whether the impeachment proceedings in the lower house were invalid.
Various justices on the court have already signaled that they do not intend to interfere in a substantial way in the handling of the impeachment process in Congress.
