"Impeachment" à brasileiraa evolução do contorno da responsabilidade política do Presidente da República

Abstract

The work addresses the issue of the circumstances that may lead to the impeachment of the President of the Republic, its origins in English parliamentarianism, the transformation under American presidentialism and its current implementation in Brazil and selected countries. It discusses the nature of the decision in the impeachment trial of the President of the Republic and defends that such judgment is of a political nature, but that it presupposes a legal conduct and process. The thesis analyzes the four presidential impeachments in Brazilian history, with special detail on the case study of the impeachment that took place in 2016, which culminated in the removal of President Dilma Rousseff from office, a process the author witnessed as the court clerk. The case study proposes an analysis that begins with Dilma's accusations and defense arguments, narrates the process, and finally discusses the sanction applied. The author defends the constitutionality of the decision made in August 2016 to split into two votes the question of the trial of the president. Then, the discussion about the nature of the senators' deliberation in the trial of the impeachment of the President of the Republic is resumed, based on the case study. The thesis brings as field research exclusive interviews granted by the six central characters of the impeachments occurred in Brazil in 1992, against Fernando Collor, and in 2016, against Dilma Rousseff. Besides these authorities who suffered impeachment, the author also interviewed the two presidents of the Supreme Court in 1992 and 2016, Sydney Sanches and Ricardo Lewandowski, and the two presidents of the Federal Senate at the time, Mauro Benevides and Renan Calheiros. Finally, the author discusses the draft prepared by the commission of jurists appointed by the Brazilian Senate, of which he was part, with the mission of updating the outdated (and in some parts, unconstitutional) law in force in the country.