Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – On August 31, 2016, the Brazilian Federal Senate approved the impeachment trial and the definitive fall of the mandate of the leftist Dilma Rousseff, the first woman to become the President of the country. Ten years after a vote that paralyzed the Latin American giant, Brazil is very different: polarization permeates political life; evangelical groups gained unprecedented prominence; and a new political dynasty, the Bolsonaros, dominates the spectrum of the extreme right.

First modification: 08/31/2026 - 02:04 Last modification: 08/31/2026 - 21:22

The images of the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff have been recorded in the collective memory, which began on April 17, 2016 with the approval in the Chamber of Deputies by 367 votes to 137. There were deputies who justified their vote "for God", "for the family" or for their churches. There were screams, a profusion of green and yellow flags and even a congressman who fired a confetti rocket. A succession of speeches could also be heard that had little to do with the accusations against the then president.

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Among them, stands out that of a deputy at that time practically unknown outside the circles of the extreme right, who dedicated his vote "against communism" and "for the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra." It was the far-right Jair Bolsonaro and he was not quoting just any military man: Ustra was the head of the repression center of the military dictatorship and personally participated in the torture sessions inflicted on Dilma Rousseff when she was a young leftist militant.

The Brazilian Justice recognized him as a torturer. That same day, a left-wing legislator, Jean Wyllys, spat in the face of what would later become President Bolsonaro, after receiving insults and homophobic attacks. The vote, broadcast live throughout the country, became an embarrassing spectacle, reflecting a deeply divided Brazil.

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Those scenes not only revealed to the largest country in Latin America the true nature of the Congress, but also condensed an important part of what was about to begin.

For João Feres Júnior, professor of Political Science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, the dismissal of the leftist president was a decisive stage in a broader process of delegitimization of Brazilian politics.

"The 'impeachment' of Rousseff was the result of an escalation that led to the election of Bolsonaro, but behind it there was a common cause: the devaluation of political representation and the attack on its legitimacy, particularly as a result of the exploitation of corruption scandals by the press and also by political forces. There was a process that began with the Mensalão scandal and reached Lava Jato, in which political institutions were strongly attacked, especially representation," Feres affirms in an interview with France. 24.

Elected in 2010 with 56% of the votes and re-elected in 2014 with a tight 51.64% against the social democratic candidate Aécio Neves, Dilma Rousseff reached her second term in the midst of a deep economic, political and moral crisis, marked by the advance of the Lava Jato anti-corruption operation and by an accelerated deterioration of her relationship with Congress.

In the streets, massive demonstrations called for his removal from power. In them coexisted the rejection of corruption, economic discontent and a growing “anti-Peterism”, that is, the rejection of the leftist Workers' Party (PT), founded by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 1980.

Feres remembers that confidence in the Presidency, which was one of the institutions most valued by Brazilians - Lula reached close to 80% approval at the end of his second term -, plummeted during those years. The political and economic forces that sought to remove the PT from power, he maintains, achieved their objective, but they did not anticipate the consequences.

"The political forces that concocted all that, I think, did not foresee the emergence of the extreme right. It was a surprise for them. That is, they gave birth to a monster that they did not want and that they did not imagine," says this political scientist.

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An 'impeachment' that the left suddenly baptized

The legal argument to instruct Rousseff's impeachment process focused on the so-called “fiscal pedals,” accounting maneuvers through which the Government delayed payments to public banks. For the leftist leader's detractors, it was a crime of responsibility, a constitutional requirement to remove a president.

However, for a part of society and the Brazilian left, those same practices had been used by previous governments and continued to exist afterwards. From that perspective, a convenient interpretation of the law was used to remove from power a president reelected just two years earlier.

Márcia Ribeiro Dias, director of the School of Political Science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, recognizes that the procedure formally respected the stages provided for in the Constitution. But, in his opinion, it was a “coup.”

"When Dilma was elected in 2014, there was a government program, an orientation approved through the polls. When Dilma's 'impeachment' and the inauguration of Michel Temer [her number two] took place, he subverted the government plan approved at the polls and instead implemented a bridge to the future. Worse still, he not only removed the president of the Republic - who, in theory, would have committed the crime - but all the cadres of the Party of the Workers, who held government positions,” he explains.

For this political scientist, the change was even more profound because Temer launched reforms and policies that, according to her analysis, largely responded to the program of those who had lost the 2014 elections.

"That's where I see the coup: it was against the popular will approved at the polls. When you replace the programmatic content of a government agenda with that of the adversary, you are carrying out a coup against that will. The content of the PT was withdrawn and a privatization agenda and reduction of the State was put in its place," says Ribeiro Dias. Among the most controversial measures, the labor reform stands out, which made relations between employers and employees more flexible, contributing to increasing job insecurity.

The coup accusation continues to divide Brazil a decade later. For defenders of impeachment, Congress acted within its constitutional powers and followed the expected procedure. For its critics, formal legality does not eliminate the political nature of a process used to reverse the electoral result.

Indications of sexist bias

The gender issue is another significant element in this dispute over memory. Rousseff was the first and, so far, only woman to become President of Brazil. During the impeachment process, he was the target of insults and sexist attacks, as highlighted by 'The New York Times'. The violence that surrounded Dilma was constitutive of the process.

According to the Perseu Abramo Foundation, linked to the PT, Rousseff “governed under a continuous campaign of delegitimization, marked by misogynistic attacks, public insults and a systematic attempt to reduce political authority to a gender caricature.”

His adversaries also highlighted his alleged inability to negotiate and his “difficult” temperament.

"A man can be incompetent, rude or verbally aggressive and does not receive the same treatment. A woman in that situation is called crazy, uncontrolled or incapable of negotiating. That was used against Dilma. There was misogyny and also ageism. She could have a determined stance and firm convictions, but those characteristics were interpreted in a much heavier way because she was a woman," says political scientist Ribeiro Dias.

The House vote reflected that mix of religious conservatism, personal attacks and public display. Jean Wyllys even remembers that the then president of the Chamber, Eduardo Cunha, considered the architect of the 'impeachment', modified the usual arrangement of the plenary session to turn the vote into a kind of catwalk. For Wyllys, it was a “grotesque” episode and a “humiliation ritual” against Rousseff.

"A man can be incompetent, rude or verbally aggressive and does not receive the same treatment. A woman in that situation is called crazy, uncontrolled or incapable of negotiating. That was used against Dilma. There was misogyny and also ageism"

A survey by the National Confederation of Municipalities revealed in 2024 that more than 60% of female mayors and vice mayors have suffered some type of gender-based political violence. In other words, the method used against Dilma did not remain in the past: it has spread.

Today Dilma Rousseff lives in China, far from the political spotlight, where she heads the BRICS Bank, a position she assumed in 2023 and for which she was ratified in 2025. The ousted president recovered on the international stage, while the architects of the impeachment, such as Cunha, fell into disgrace.

For now, at the head of one of the main financial institutions in the global south, Rousseff is promoting the reorganization of international governance and has a role that was denied to her in Brazil in 2016.

Could there be another impeachment?

Recent Brazilian history already had a precedent. In 1992, Fernando Collor also went through an impeachment process in the midst of a gigantic corruption scandal and popular mobilizations. Collor resigned from his position before the conclusion of the process, but the Senate went ahead and confirmed his political disqualification for eight years. Dilma Rousseff was the second person to be impeached from the Presidency of Brazil since re-democratization.

However, the context of 2016 was different. Rousseff's dismissal did not close the political crisis, but rather deepened it. "The country was already divided, but the radicalization that came later did not yet exist. The impeachment generated a confrontation that strained political and social relations, and opened space for the emergence of the Bolsonaro monster. From there an anti-political discourse was also born: 'No one is useful, politicians are useless, we need a solution from outside,'" summarizes Ribeiro Dias.

Two years later, that deputy who had dedicated his vote to a torturer would become President of Brazil. For Feres, Jair Bolsonaro's success in 2018 cannot be explained simply as a massive conversion of the Brazilian electorate to the extreme right: "Those who voted for Bolsonaro wanted to appoint an outsider, someone from outside the political system, because the system was perceived as corrupt and rotten. Whoever elected Bolsonaro did not do so because of a conversion of the Brazilian electorate to fascism, but rather it was the result of years of devaluation and delegitimization of the politics and the institutions of representation,” he says.

In 2023, after Bolsonaro's electoral defeat and the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power, Brazilian democracy survived another attempt at institutional breakdown, after a failed coup d'état for which Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison. To this day, Brazil is still working to recover institutional normality.

With the wounds of 2016 still open, one of the questions is whether an impeachment process could be repeated, in the event that Lula wins an unprecedented fourth term. For Ribeiro Dias, the scenario is much more difficult, precisely because of the current president's negotiating capacity and his political and international weight.

"Lula has a conciliatory profile that is very advantageous for him and an international respectability that places him at the center of any situation that seems anomalous. I don't think his career will end in an 'impeachment'. A government without Lula could be more vulnerable, but I don't think Brazil will experience another earthquake like that one," he concludes.

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