In his latest episode of the “Global Empire”, Tariq Ali discusses the causes and consequences of the parliamentary coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.What happened in Brazil was people’s anger with the way the Brazilian government under Dilma Rousseff had tried to appease the economic demands by the United States and the massive spending on building stadiums and facilities for the World Cup and Olympic Games, the host of teleSUR’s “the Global Empire” Tariq Ali argued in a new episode.
Ali said the Workers Party and its governments led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Rousseff made the mistake of sidelining their base, alienating unions and poor people by keeping regressive economic policies that kept social programs available to poorer segments of the country.
After winning her new term in 2014, “a fatal decision was made to reverse the new gold and get rid of the reformist finance minister and she suddenly without warning embarked on austerity measures,” Ali said.
This was a “crazy” decision and resulted in major cuts across the economic system of the country leading to a “full-blown recession,” he added.
The corrupt elite and the PT’s conservative allies at the time then used the economic crisis to launch their impeachment process, Ali argued, by accusing Rousseff’s government of being corrupt for moving state money from one public institution to another, a practice that every government in Brazil and elsewhere in the world uses and implements.
Legal experts and lawyers have repeatedly said that such a practice by the Brazilian government was in no way grounds for impeaching the president as it did not constitute criminal practice.
Calling it a constitutional coup, Ali highlighted the U.S.’s role in the action against Dilma by pointing to a WikiLeaks cable showing that current President Michel Temer worked as an informant for U.S. intelligence in 2006.
“We can probably say with some confidence that what happened in Brazil today happened with the knowledge and the agreement and the approval of the American embassy.”