A decade ago, the former president of the chamber launched the operation that led to Dilma’s downfall – and months later witnessed his downfall. Now that he has been released, Cunha is trying to regain his influence, this time in Minas Gerais. Brasilia, 2 December 2015. Workers’ Party deputies announced in the early afternoon that they intended to provide the decisive votes to continue the impeachment of the then president of the Council, Eduardo Cunha, at a time when it was reeling from the revelations of Operation Lava Jato.
A few hours later, Cunha, who has had a conflicted relationship for months with the shaky federal government, led by the Workers’ Party, retaliated by allowing the impeachment process to begin for President Dilma Rousseff.
Even exhausted by accusations of secret accounts in Switzerland, in the following months he was leading what would be the pinnacle of his political influence: vocalizing Dilma’s downfall, amid the collapse of the Labor MP’s approval and street protests. The case against Dilma would be formally opened by the Chamber in a vote in April the following year, in a session chaired by Cunha.
“May God have mercy on this nation,” Cunha said when he announced his vote to impeach the president. At the same session, leftist MPs, angry at Cunha’s tactics, described him as a “gangster”, “thief” and “corrupt”.
But Konya’s downfall will not take long. Less than three weeks later, the MP’s term as Speaker of the Council, which lasted 459 days, ended by order of the Federal Supreme Court, which suspected that the MP was obstructing investigations.
Away and without the pen of the presidency, Cunha saw his influence over his colleagues at the Physiological Center eroding. Once his role in introducing accountability measures in the Council ends, he will no longer be tolerated by the opposition, and he will increasingly be seen as a growing embarrassment to Michel Temer’s new government.
In September 2016, Cunha ended up being impeached by the chamber, by a vote of 450 to 10. The following month, without authorization, he was arrested on the order of then-Judge Sergio Moro.
This would not be the first downfall for Cunha, who was already at the center of other scandals in Rio de Janeiro, his original electoral base, in the 1990s, which prompted him to migrate to different political groups and forced him at different times to rebuild his influence.
A decade after Dilma’s impeachment proceedings began, the former lawmaker is once again trying to make a political shift.
Arrest and conviction
After leaving the chamber, Cunha also accumulated convictions for passive corruption, money laundering and currency evasion.
The former lawmaker will spend nearly three and a half years in closed confinement, first in Curitiba and then in Rio’s Pango prison. In March 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, he was placed under house arrest.
However, as of 2021, Cunha’s fortunes have begun to change, with the end of Operation Lava Jato and the cancellation of the operation’s operations by the STF. In May of that year, his final house arrest order was revoked and he was released.
The daughter’s election and the first failed attempt to return
While in prison, Cunha transferred to his daughter Danielle his old electoral base in Rio de Janeiro, which the former MP had built in the late 1990s among New Pentecostal voters. Danielle, or Dani Cunha, will try to be elected to the council in 2018, linking the nomination to her father, but to no avail.
A new bid will be made in 2022, this time resulting in the election of Dani Cunha. Her campaign was boosted by the Multilateral Development Bank’s injection of R$2 million from the electoral fund, an amount that exceeded the values of veteran candidates.
Meanwhile, Cunha, who had already been released, obtained an injunction in 2022 temporarily suspending his ineligibility. He left the space in Rio to his daughter, registered his candidacy in the state of São Paulo, and joined Roberto Jefferson’s PTB party. The disqualification was imposed again shortly afterwards, but Cunha was able to ensure that his number remained in the polls.
Targeting anti-PT voters, Cunha made publicity about his previous role in the impeachment. “I did not conduct impeachment by simply accepting the request. I did everything to get it approved. I made it clear, and I fought for it. Impeachment was the greatest achievement of my political career,” he said in a campaign column.
However, without an effective base in São Paulo, it failed at the polls, receiving only 5,000 votes.
The nomination will also reveal that the years of turmoil have not harmed Kunha’s financial situation. He remained wealthy, having declared assets worth R$14.1 million to the electoral court.
Construction of a base in Minas Gerais in 2026
After failing in São Paulo, Cunha, now 67, returned to Minas Gerais. At the end of 2024, he began systematically building a regional influence network based on the cultivation of evangelical voters, as part of a plan to run for federal state representative.
It is a tactic that Cunha had already adopted in Rio de Janeiro in the 1990s, when his political career took its first blow after his name was implicated in the “PC scheme,” the focus of the Collor impeachment case (1990-1992). In the following years, Cunha regained his influence by becoming an evangelical politician, a segment that was on the rise at the time.
At the moment, Cunha is involved in services in the state of Minas Gerais. In April, at the opening of a temple in Araxa, he received public praise from the priest Valdemiro Santiago.
In Minas, Cunha also revived another strategy that helped pave the way for his first victory in Rio as a federal lawmaker in 2002: presence and control of evangelical radio stations.
In recent months, Cunha has purchased or opened several stations in the state of Minas Gerais. Five of them are already operating in the Zona da Mata, the area bordering Rio de Janeiro, including stations in Juiz de Fora and Guarani.
Another opened in July in Belo Horizonte, containing an hourly segment titled “Versículo da hora – com Eduardo Cunha”.
There are also stations in Uberaba and Uberlândia, in Triângulo Mineiro. To date, Cunha already has more than ten radio stations in operation, grouped together under the name “Rede 89 Maravilha”. In early November, Cunha said the plan included installing 23 radios.
“We pass on faith, hope and the Word of God,” says the network’s motto.
Initially, Cunha began secretly acquiring radio stations, through his brother-in-law, but later began to actively participate in programming, leading programs that mixed discussions of politics and religion. He also started talking openly about his plans for 2026.
Cunha also used the network to advance on other fronts. In Uberaba, his radio station began sponsoring a football club. In April, Cunha, a Flamengo fan, recorded a video wishing FC Uberaba well in the Minas Gerais second division.
In addition to his meetings with council members across the state, Cunha has also courted local agribusinesses, in a move similar to his time on the council, when he moved between evangelicals and businessmen. In April, he participated in the opening of Expozebu, one of the world’s largest livestock fairs, in Uberaba, in addition to participating in a livestock auction.
The ineligibility still hangs over the plans
Cunha currently belongs to the Republican Party and opened negotiations with Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party in the first half of the year, but the talks have not made progress.
Until the end of November. It has not yet officially changed its electoral headquarters from São Paulo to Minas, and the deadline expires in April 2026.
But even with the possibility of a transfer, Cunha plans to still face disqualification. Although he was able to overturn his conviction, the former MP still faces the consequences of his impeachment by the chamber in September 2016.
After the short period opened by a court order allowing candidacy in 2022, the federation reaffirmed Kunha’s ineligibility.
Although more than eight years have passed since his impeachment, the maximum period under the Clean Slate Law, Cunha’s sentence began to run on the last remaining day of his term, January 31, 2019. In other words, his disqualification must last until 2027.
In an attempt to shorten the deadline, Cunha began to rely on the help of his daughter, Congresswoman Dani Cunha, who now works for the Brazilian Federation, and who promoted the project to change the deadlines in Vicha Limba. One proposed change appears to be tailored to the father: the eight-year period begins from the date of its repeal. In Konya’s case, the date will be retroactive to 2024.
The initiative successfully advanced in Congress between June and September, despite criticism from clean slate advocates. However, President Lula ended up vetoing several sections.
The change that set the date of impeachment as a disqualification milestone would have stood, but had not prevented the possibility of the measure being applied retroactively to politicians who had already been impeached, leaving Cunha in limbo.
Lula’s veto could still be overridden by Congress, as happened last week with the environmental licensing bill. Experts also point out that even with the veto power maintained, the changes passed have already opened the door to legal challenges.
Cunha has tried to signal in interviews that he is not worried, claiming that he already considers himself qualified since 2022.
At the same time, it continues to expand its influence in Minas Gerais. But his trips around the state are not without incidents. In June, when he disembarked at Convience, in Greater Belo Horizonte, he was booed and called a “thief” by Bolsonaro supporters who were there awaiting the arrival of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who was coincidentally traveling on the same flight.