BRAZIL’S FIRST FEMALE — -AND NOW IMPEACHED — -PRESIDENT DILMA ROUSSEFF

Was Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, also the first politician in the country’s storied and checkered history to illegally manipulate the federal budget in an effort to conceal the nation’s mounting economic travails?

Dubious.

Accused of breaking fiscal laws including illegally borrowing from state banks and found guilty of moving funds between government budgets in an effort to plug holes — a creative (political) accounting practice she claims is as old as dirt — the suspended President was impeached by Brazil’s Senate on August 31 when 61 members voted in favor of her dismissal and 20 against, handily exceeding the two-thirds majority required to remove her from office permanently.

(She was not accused of stealing for personal enrichment).

More an indictment of her weak leadership — and that of the leftist Workers’ Party — amidst the slipping fortunes of Latin America’s largest nation, not surprisingly Rousseff characterized the political maelstrom as amounting to nothing other than a coup d’etat.

Sweeping corruption scandals, the worst economic crisis in decades and the government’s lackluster responses to a nation’s plummeting morale had usurped the position of the button-bursting pride spawned by a formerly booming economy which had lifted millions into the middle-class and enhanced the country’s global profile.

Ms. Rousseff was left with little support to parry and quell a power grab by her political rivals.

She lost the impeachment battle but triumphed in a separate Senate vote seeking to disqualify and effectively ban her from serving in public office for eight years.

“I will not say goodbye to you,” she assured her remaining supporters in a statement made from Brasilia. “I am certain I can say: ‘See you soon.’”

She added for good measure that “they have convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup.”

But detractors may spin a yarn of a different hue.

Mentor Muniz Neto, a Sao Paulo writer remarked that “she lacked it all,” characterizing her final removal as “a death foretold.”

According to him Rousseff came up short in the competence, charisma and humility departments. “We deserved better,” he lamented.

Political pundits noted that her autocratic persona and signature go-it-alone work mentality alienated scores of her supporters, former staffers and cabinet ministers, contributing mightily to her eventual demise.

Her propensity toward displays of public humiliation did little to aid her cause.

“She’s alienated so many politicians and squandered the [goodwill] of so many people, in part because of her terrible political skills but also because of her arrogance…that in her hour of need, very few people [were] willing to run to her defense,” asserted Edson Sardinha, editor of Congresso em Foco, a magazine which focuses on government corruption.

She in many ways represents the eye of a storm which has ravaged Brazil, enduring its worst economic crisis in decades with millions falling out of the middle class and into poverty.

By early 2016 the country had lost about 1.5 million jobs; had its worst yearly GDP contraction since 1990; and wallowed in double-digit inflation, surpassing by far the established target rate. Major credit rating agencies downgraded the country’s debt to junk levels.

Inflaming and exacerbating this incendiary situation is the well-founded allegation that many of the country’s political elites had enriched themselves from a multibillion dollar graft scheme involving Petrobras, the government-controlled oil giant.

Private construction firms and politicians were alleged to have lined their respective pockets as if the apocalypse was to viciously unfurl and hit by dawn.

Dilma Rousseff was chairwoman of Petrobras during part of the time that this graft ring operated.

In the meantime, her former VP and coalition partner, Michel Temer who has been Brazil’s interim president since Rousseff’s May suspension is now her replacement.

Regarded as “a wily political operator” with extensive congressional experience, it is believed by many that Temer’s tentacles could still be wrapped around the Petrobras debacle.

Investigations of politicians from his more conservative Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) have opened in an effort to more closely examine the alleged receipt of bribes and kickbacks.

A cooperating former Petrobras executive has stated that Temer asked for an illicit $400,000 campaign donation in 2012 for his party’s Sao Paulo mayoral candidate.

Temer denied the allegation.

And predictably, Rousseff has accused Temer of actively playing a role in her overthrow.

Whatever the future holds for Brazil and its corruption-rife political landscape, the saga of Dilma Rousseff should remind us at the very least that we are fortunate to live within the parameters of a working democracy.

Ousted from office less than halfway through her mandate for committing “a crime of responsibility” lends credence to the notion that the nation’s political class remains uncomfortable with the democratic process.

In the thirty years since the end of Brazil’s military dictatorship only 2 of the last 8 elected presidents have completed their terms. Two have been impeached, one removed in a military coup, one committed suicide, one died before assuming office and another resigned.

Once one of the world’s most popular politicians with approval ratings touching 85%, Rousseff’s reign was marred by controversy punctuated by a hostile congress and a fickle-turned-dire financial climate.

Her arrogant outbursts became the stuff of legend, Trump-like actually.

Indeed the behavior of Brazil’s first female president at times evoked images of The Donald.

We are very lucky.

In our democratic presidential election, now just weeks away, we get to choose one or the other and thankfully not both.

[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in October 2016.]