Brazilian President Accused of Violating Financial Laws: Rouseff Impeachment Proceedings Launched 

Brazilian Lower House Speaker, Eduardo Cunha, has finally agreed to open impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday.

The request, which was filed by the opposition party in September, accused the president of violating the country's fiscal laws and manipulating government finances to benefit her reelection campaign last year.

Rousseff, for her part, refused to take the blame sitting down. She said, "I have received with indignation the decision by the head of the lower chamber to [launch] the impeachment process. There is no wrongful act committed by me, nor are there any suspicions that I have misused public money."

Huffington Post reported that a special committee with members from all parties will decide whether or not the request has merit. Following this, a two-thirds vote of the chamber is needed to suspend Rousseff pending a 90-day trial by the Senate.

If the impeachment process succeeds, Rousseff is to hand over her presidency to her Vice President, Michel Temer, who, incidentally is from the same Democratic Movement Party as Cunha.

The lower house speaker, Rousseff's political nemesis as described by The Guardian, is himself fighting for survival, but having in his power to start the impeachment proceedings has given him an upperhand against the incumbent. When accused of being motivated by personal reasons regarding his decision to put Rousseff on trial, Cunha dismissed the idea, saying that "The basis of this (impeachment proceeding) is purely technical."

Talks of the impeachment adds to an already long list of problems that the president is currently working on. Rousseff is currently dealing with what is said to be Brazil's worst scandal in history, and her current popularity ratings have sunk to single digits. Worst of all is the recession, with economic figures showing that the country is currently heading to its lowest since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Unemployment and inflation have also been high, while value of wages has fallen.

However, despite all of the problems in her administration, there's actually a possibility that she will serve the rest of her term, although, not by much. Reuters reported that the Eurasia Politica risk consultancy think there's a 60 percent chance she can finish the term as the pro-impeachment forces did not reach the necessary two-thirds vote to carry her case to the court. However, other analysts believe that she's still vulnerable.

David Fleischer, a politics professor at the University of Brasilia said, "The chances of her opponents impeaching Rousseff are pretty good because she has lost a lot of allies."