Rousseff Impeachment Committee to Be Re-formed, Brazil Supreme Court Rules

A congressional committee formed in Brazil to guide the process of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment must be disbanded, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – According to the high court’s Thursday ruling, the committee will be re-formed under new rules, which stipulate an open vote, rather than secret ballot selection which was first used to elect the committee’s members.

Brazil’s Supreme Court also ruled on Thursday that the Senate can reject the president’s impeachment by a simple majority, even if the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) votes to impeach Rousseff.

Brazil’s leader has been facing rising discontent over the country's struggling economy and a major corruption scandal in the state-owned energy corporation Petrobras. Rousseff headed the company between 2003 and 2010, the period during which most of the corruption reportedly took place.

On December 2, speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha launched impeachment proceedings against Rousseff, following an opposition-backed request, accusing the president of fiscal law violations. The Chamber of Deputies then launched a special committee to review the issue.

In October, Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts (TCU) called on the country’s Congress to reject government accounts after ruling that Rousseff broke the law by manipulating the 2014 state budget.