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Bid to oust president lacks legal basis: Brazil's attorney general

Xinhua, April 5, 2016 Adjust font size:

Brazil's Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo on Monday argued proposed impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff be shelved, saying the impeachment was motivated by political "revenge."

In defending Rousseff at a hearing of the Special Impeachment Committee of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the Brazilian parliament), Cardozo said the call to impeach the president had no legal basis and was "tainted" by ulterior motives.

The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, who approved setting up a committee to explore the impeachment, was not motivated by a desire to protect the Constitution, but by political "revenge", said Cardozo.

Citing several media reports, Cardozo said that Cunha threatened law makers of the ruling Workers' Party with allowing impeachment proceedings unless they vote against an investigation against him by the congressional ethics committee.

Cunha, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the country's largest opposition party, had been accused of receiving at least 5 million U.S. dollars in bribes involving a contract by state oil company Petrobras.

He is also the target of an ethics investigation within the Chamber of Deputies, which could see him unseated if he is proved to have links to the Petrobras corruption ring.

"The Constitution holds that only extremely serious misconduct that threatens institutional foundations can lead to impeachment," said Cardozo.

Additionally, he said, impeachment can only apply if the crime has been carried out by the president herself.

In the absence of a crime against the Constitution on the part of the president, impeachment would be tantamount to a coup, he added.

If necessary, Cardozo said he would ask the Federal Supreme Court to annul the proposed impeachment process.

The Special Impeachment Committee must now decide whether to pursue the proceedings. If it votes to do so, then the motion will go before the Chamber of Deputies, which can decide to send the proceedings on to the Senate or shelve the case.

To go to the Senate, the measure requires at least 342 of the 513 votes in the lower house. The chamber is expected to vote by April 21. Endi