Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was left scrambling for votes to save her presidency in a looming impeachment showdown after her main coalition partner walked out of the government on Tuesday.
The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the country’s largest party, voted to immediately end its alliance with Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party (PT) and go into opposition.
“From today, at this historic meeting of the PMDB, the PMDB withdraws from the government of President Rousseff,” the party’s vice president Senator Romero Juca said.
Photo: EPA
The meeting, broadcast live on national television, was the culmination of a long divorce with Rousseff, leaving Brazil’s first female president grasping at straws as she tries to stay in power.
The vote and announcement took no more than three minutes and was accompanied by singing of the national anthem and shouts of “PT out.”
The split plunges Rousseff’s government into fresh crisis mode and, more seriously, greatly reduces her chances of mustering the one third of votes in the lower house of the Brazilian Congress that she needs to defeat a first impeachment vote, expected next month.
“If you look at the numbers, that’s basically it,” Brasilia National University political science professor Everaldo Moraes said.
Rousseff canceled a trip to Washington for a nuclear safety summit scheduled for today and tomorrow, the state news agency said.
A government spokesman said that in “the current political context,” it was not advisable.
If the lower house votes in favor, an impeachment trial would start in the Brazilian Senate, where a two-thirds vote would force Rousseff from office.
Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer would take over as interim president.
High-ranking PMDB member Eliseu Padilha predicted that Rousseff had only weeks left.
“In less than three months we’ll have a new government — in two months,” he told reporters.
“The exit of the PMDB is the last nail in the coffin,” said opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party president Senator Aecio Neves, who narrowly lost to Rousseff when she won re-election in 2014.
The PMDB has 69 of the 513 lower house seats and 60 of these deputies will vote for impeachment, Padilha said.
Analysts said that the PMDB’s exit could also encourage minor coalition partners to quit.
Lawmakers from the center-right Progressive Party, which has 49 deputies, and the center-left Social Democratic Party, which has 32, said their parties would meet this week on a possible split.
However, Workers’ Party loyalists are negotiating intensely with individual deputies, trying to persuade them to vote against the grain.
“We can’t give an exact evaluation, but they are exaggerating the support for impeachment among PMDB deputies,” Workers’ Party legislator Alfonso Florence said.
Echoing Rousseff, Florence said the opposition was effectively mounting “a coup.”
The impeachment case alleges that Rousseff illegally borrowed money to boost public spending and mask the severity of the recession from voters during her re-election.
The Brazilian bar association filed a new impeachment petition on Monday, seeking to expand the accusations to include allegations of involvement by Rousseff in the multibillion-dollar corruption scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras.
Although still vice president, Temer, 75, increasingly resembles apolitician preparing for power.
The growing instability has spilled onto the streets with millions of Brazilians marching against Rousseff and smaller, but still vigorous, rallies held in her defense. Another round of pro-Rousseff protests was planned for today.
Rousseff has called on her mentor, former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to become chief of staff so that he could stiffen resolve in the ranks and put his negotiating skills to use.
However, the move prompted a swift backlash from opponents who see the appointment as a bid to give Lula ministerial immunity and protect him from corruption allegations related to the Petrobras probe.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
RSS