Even without Rousseff, Brazil must wean itself off dependence on commodities

On Sunday, Brazil's equivalent of Canada's House of Commons voted in favour of impeaching President Dilma Rousseff. The charge against her is that she fudged the numbers to show a modest fiscal surplus rather than a modest deficit.

This somewhat absurd development can be linked back to Brazilians' almost superstitious belief in BRIC: an acronym standing for Brazil, Russia, India and China (South Africa is a more recent member). The belief was that these countries' rise was inevitable, and that their economies would boom for a long period.

In fact, the countries don't have much in common. The financial crash of 2008 brought on a commodities boom, with a great demand from China. During the recession, China was able to buy raw materials cheaply, and Brazil was indeed one of a group of countries that sold them and temporarily benefited from a boom. But it couldn't last, a point that many Brazilians didn't reckon on.

The Workers' Party, founded by the labour union leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil from 2003 to 2011, prospered during the good years. He chose his chief of staff, Ms. Rousseff, as his successor.

In her first term, Ms. Rousseff (at one time a left-wing urban guerrilla under a military dictatorship) sensibly tightened monetary policy to prevent overheating of the economy. But the commodity super-cycle kept on heading downward.

Her second term as president had barely begun when Ms. Rousseff, the former Marxist, brought in austerity policies. Interest rates rose to 14.25 per cent. Many voters of the Workers' Party naturally felt themselves to be betrayed, even when Mr. Lula, her one-time mentor, returned as her chief of staff.

The state of Brazilian politics is now in melodramatic chaos, by no means for the first time in its history. Impeachment or no impeachment, Brazil has not found ways to wean itself off dependence on commodities – somewhat like Vladimir Putin's Russia, with its oil and gas, Saudi Arabia, or even the respectable, democratic Alberta of Rachel Notley.

Ideally, Ms. Rousseff should have warned the voters of coming hardships. Instead, she may be deposed as a result of the equivalent of a parliamentary budget officer's report.