Brazil’s Businesses Are Sick of the Impeachment Drama

The drawn-out political drama over the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil has sent local stocks reeling and recovering again and again. On May 9, investors, who’d already factored in a transition period under Vice President Michel Temer, were spooked when the impeachment process was briefly put into doubt by a legislative maneuver. After that was ironed out, the march toward Rousseff’s trial and likely removal from office pressed on, and stocks and the Brazilian currency rallied. Brazil's Senate voted to suspend Rousseff from office early Thursday.

With political gridlock paralyzing the nation’s capital since last year, corporate Brazil has been living with uncertainty—and that’s been bad for business. Although executives have been reluctant to take sides publicly in the debate over the charges against Rousseff (using state-run banks to cover up a budget gap, an alleged breach of a fiscal responsibility law), they’ve bemoaned the lack of clear governmental policies. Bureaucrats have been sitting on their hands as Rousseff’s government and the country’s lawmakers ran from ring to ring in the impeachment circus. “If you hear absolutely nothing from the president regarding what concerns us the most, which is a year and a half of the economy at a halt, it becomes clear that she has no solution to present to us,” says Antônio Emílio Fugazza, chief financial officer at homebuilder Eztec Empreendimentos e Participações.