ON SUNDAY April 17th the lower house of Brazil’s congress held a special session to vote on whether the president, Dilma Rousseff, should be put through an impeachment trial. The charge is that her government had fiddled government accounts, concealing their parlous state. But hardly any of the federal deputies who spoke in the raucous, viciously partisan televised special session even mentioned this. Instead, as opponents of impeachment assailed them as liars, thieves, bigots and coup-mongers, they cited a more eclectic bunch of reasons for their votes. Here is a small selection, translated by The Economist, from a list collated by Cecília Olliveira, an observer of Brazilian politics:
  • For the birthday of my granddaughter
  • For the foundations of Christianity
  • For Bruno and Felipe
  • For the Masons of Brazil
  • For rural producers, because if they don’t plant there will be neither lunch nor dinner
  • Because of the proposal that children can have sex-change procedures [while still] in school
  • To end the profitability of being unemployed or a layabout
  • For the congregation of the “Quadrangular” [an evangelical church]
  • For the aged and children
  • For an end to welfare dependency
  • For my mother Lucimar
  • For charismatic renewal
  • For Brazilian doctors
  • To put an end to CUT [the biggest Brazilian grouping of trade unions] and its no-good types
  • For the love of this country
  • For an end to the Petrobras scandal and those who profited from it
  • For the Republic of Curitiba [a Brazilian state; Sérgio Moro, the crusading judge leading the investigation into corruption at the state-controlled oil giant, Petrobras, hails from there]
  • In memory of my father
  • For Campo Grande [the state capital of Mato Grosso do Sul], the loveliest brunette of Brazil
  • For gun control
  • Because of the communism that threatens this country
  • For the fearless and pioneering people of the state of Rondônia
  • For BR 429 [an interstate highway]
  • For all the insurance brokers
  • For my unborn daughter Manoela
  • For my 93-year-old mother who is at home
  • In homage to my city’s founding day
  • For peace in Jerusalem
  • For the best state, Tocantins
  • For my mother, who at the moment is fighting for her life
  • For the sector that generates wealth: agribusiness
  • For my son Breno and my beloved military police of São Paulo
  • For the military of 1964 [who took control of Brazil in a coup]
  • So that we don’t become Reds like in Venezuela and North Korea
  • For my 78-year-old father who taught me the principles of the word of God
  • For Sandra, for Erica, for Vítor, for Jorge, and for my grandson who is on the way
  • For my state of São Paulo, governed for the past 20 years by honest politicians from my party
  • For my wife and my daughter, who are my principal electorate
  • As tribute to my only and true riches, my daughters
  • For an end to the “colonels” [the big landowners and rich families who effectively rule much of north and north-east Brazil]
  • For the armed forces who are now pensioners without a salary
  • In tribute to my father Roberto Jefferson [a Brazilian politician implicated in a massive political scandal in 2005]
  • For Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the Terror of Dilma [Colonel Brilhante Ustra was the chief torturer under the military dictatorship]
  • For street-dwellers who sleep on the street, are born on the street and die on the street
  • In order that no government stands against the nation of Israel
  • For science and technology
  • For my wife Mariana and daughter little Mariana
  • Against the Bolivarian dictatorship
  • For the truckers
  • For free men and morality
  • For the honour of the people of Minas Gerais [a Brazilian state]
  • For Canção Nova [a Catholic radio and television network]; for the Brazilians who live with drugs
  • For my aunt Eurides, who looked after me when I was small
  • For you, mum
  • For the libertarian traditions of Minas Gerais
  • I forgot to mention my son. For you, Paulo Henrique! Kiss!
  • For the cancer hospital
  • In tribute to the victims of BR 251 [an interstate highway]
  • To honour the flag of Minas Gerais
  • I am a leader of the majority; I am not a leader of the minority 
Read The Economist's analysis of the vote here