Off the wire
• Lebanon fails again to elect a new president  • Most Chinese cities suffer air pollution in Q3  • Bacterial infections at Jamaican hospitals kill 18 infants  • Threats linger as number of endangered birds tops 2,000  • Senior Palestine official blames Israel for growing tensions as UN chief arrives in West Bank for talks  • Roundup: Thailand to boost domestic uses of low-priced rubber  • China accelerates removal of high-emission vehicles  • China's hi-res mapping satellite sends back more visual data  • Singapore stocks close 0.22 pct higher  • Foreign exchange rates in Singapore  
You are here: 　 Home

Brazil's president, lower house speaker continue spat

Xinhua, October 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

The public fight between Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff and lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha continued Tuesday, as Cunha ironically responded to the president's earlier statement made in Europe.

In allusion to Cunha's alleged million-dollar accounts in Switzerland, Rousseff said on Sunday that she was sorry about a Brazilian being embroiled in a scandal of having undeclared accounts recently discovered by the Swiss authorities.

In response, Cunha expressed regret that the greatest corruption scandal in the world was happening to the Brazilian government, referring to the big corruption scheme uncovered at the state-controlled oil and gas giant Petrobras.

Cunha, who decides on whether to launch impeachment of the president as lower house speaker, has been hit by a series of accusations of corruption which have led to calls for his ouster.

Besides the alleged multimillion-dollar Swiss accounts being investigated by Brazilian authorities, Cunha has been accused of taking million-dollar bribes in investigations of the same Petrobras scandal he uses to attack Rousseff.

Rousseff said earlier on Tuesday that her government is not involved in any corruption scandal, but Cunha said that as a state company, Petrobras is part of the government.

The public fight is also a sign of the tension between Rousseff and Cunha's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the largest party in her coalition which has turned against her.

Several PMDB leaders, including Cunha, have declared they are no longer aligned with the government. Although Rousseff recently made a cabinet reshuffle to give more ministries to the PMDB, the tension between the PMDB and her office has not subsided. Endi