Now, Temer is politically very far to the right of Dilma – who was once
hailed as the heiress to the very popular political legacy of Lula da
Silva but has then
mismanaged the economy badly
to lose popularity. Temer is accused of serious corruption and is
probably correctly described as allied with the right wing forces
(equally or worse corrupt) of parliament that want to have Dilma
removed. This fact, together with a truly crazy roller coaster process
of parliamentary decisions, courts and judges interfering at different
levels, and a fresh speaker of parliament
trying a last minute nullification
of the whole shebang the other day, then making a 180° turn just a few
hours later, have made commentators to the left side of typical
conservative politics talk about a "coup". Not a military coup or a
palace coup, of course, but nevertheless something truly undemocratic
and fishy going on to remove a democratically elected political leader
to the benefit of one representing a party that has performed weak to
say the least in the last few general elections. This, not least, is
Dilma's own main line. Some sources describing the same or very similar points are
here,
here,
here,
here,
to name just a few. What's so interesting with this argument is that
those who sing the coup line, do it with a long line of qualifiers. It's
a "soft" coup, or a "light" one, it's not unconstitutional, but still a
coup, neither is it against the democratic process of Brazil, but a
coup nevertheless. And so on. So, one may wonder, with that definition
of a coup, what's
not a coup in the area of democratic states changing leaders?
Let's face it. Brazil is a constitutional democracy. One might prefer
changes to its constitution, but that goes, of course, for all
constitutional democracies. None of them are perfect. Within this
constitution, Dilma has been elected for president by (strong!) popular
vote, and it seems that none of the coup advocates complain about that,
so Brazil democracy must be doing OK also by their light. Likewise,
within this constitution, Dilma has selected Michel Temer as her vice
prez, probably for reasons of the power politics of forming political
alliances going on in any democratic state following a general election.
That is, Michel Temer is as democratically selected as any vice
president or vice PM of any country. Moreover, the role of a vice prez
or PM is exactly to step in when the president or PM cannot perform
their duties of office. This, once again, does not make Brazil an
exception from other constitutional democracies. This alone settles the
fact that there is nothing undemocratic or constitutionally dodgy of
having a political mirror image taking over for Dilma. It's a
consequence of her own democratic political moves to form a strong
government to lead. This holds whatever the reason for her incapacity to
execute her office, should it be illness, disappearance, death – or
criminal charges. Moreover, the impeachment process seems to be
perfectly constitutional, as the democratic constitution here gives the
power to drive it to parliament rather than courts. Again, this may look
unsatisfactory to some, but this solution to the issue of how to deal
with (suspected) criminal political leaders, is far from unique among
constitutional democracies around the world. At the end of the day,
therefore, the 180 day removal of Dilma from office seems to be
perfectly democratic and constitutional, and the consequence of this
removal is that Temer now takes over, again (as we saw) perfectly in
line with constitutional democratic rules and procedures.
My conclusion is that if the removal of Dilma and insertion of Temer as
president is a coup, so is every constitutionally democratic
(re)formation of government all over the world.
What we see in Brazil is nothing undemocratic or even a lack of
democracy. It is about a deeply corrupt state and country, where
political leaders sell themselves for money and form ideologically
bizarre alliances for the mere reason of holding on to power, and the
country's highest leader making serious political mistakes and not
revising policies. This is something that needs to be highlighted much
more: democracy is no guarantee for sound politics or well functioning
states. It has other merits, of course, but to get at the deficiencies
exposed by the latest mess in Brazil, we should look in other directions
than the system for allocating formal political power, namely
here.
