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Brasília: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is facing a crucial weekend for her political survival, culminating Sunday with expected nationwide protests calling for her impeachment.
The embattled leftist will be under scrutiny Saturday as the largest party in her coalition, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), holds its national convention amid deep divisions over whether to continue in her government or break with it.
The huge centrist party is expected to re-elect as its leader Vice President Michel Temer, the man who would take over as president if Rousseff is forced out.
The more complicated debate will be on whether to ditch Rousseff, who is facing an impeachment drive, a bruising recession, a spiralling corruption scandal and a probe of alleged electoral violations.
Brazilian media reports suggested the party could forge a compromise in which it neither breaks with the government nor backs it.
That would give PMDB Congress members free rein to vote against the president in impeachment proceedings.
Rousseff's woes deepened this week as prosecutors charged her powerful mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, with money laundering and requested his arrest in a case linked to a massive corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras.
The opposition is counting on the shockwave created by the charges against the once wildly popular ex-president to draw huge crowds into the streets for protests Sunday in cities across Brazil.
The largest demonstration is expected in Sao Paulo, the financial capital and an opposition stronghold, where authorities say they are preparing for a million protesters.
- 'Brazil is boiling' -
Congress is mulling impeachment proceedings against Rousseff over allegations she fudged the government's accounts in 2014, during her reelection campaign, and in 2015 to hide the magnitude of the recession racking the once-booming South American giant.
The Supreme Court is due to rule Wednesday on whether impeachment proceedings can go forward.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Electoral Court is considering a case that could result in judges invalidating her reelection.
So far, Rousseff has managed to fight off impeachment, but the opposition is fired up by the case against Lula, who is suspected of accepting a luxury apartment as a bribe from a company accused of taking part in the multi-billion-dollar corruption scheme at Petrobras.
Rousseff dug in Friday, telling her critics there wasn't "the slightest possibility" she would resign and closing ranks with Lula, saying she would be proud to have him in her cabinet.
Some of her allies on the left are pressuring the president to give Lula a high-level ministerial post, which would protect him from criminal charges in ordinary court.
Under Brazilian law, cabinet ministers can only be tried before the Supreme Court.
In a sign of her administration's precarious position, the top two figures in the PMDB, Temer and Senate speaker Renan Calheiros, held talks with the opposition this week to seek a way out of the current political crisis.
The PMDB is Brazil's largest party and a major player in every recent administration, regardless of the government's political leaning.
"As I see it, the PMDB knows Brazil is boiling and that it will have to answer to history," said opposition leader Aecio Neves.
"Major sectors of the PMDB now understand that despite the personal solidarity they may have with the president, there's no solution with her in the picture."
Calheiros, the Senate speaker, declined to give details on the talks, saying only that the PMDB is "the pillar of governability."
"The PMDB must hold its convention with great responsibility because any signal on its position can lessen or increase the crisis," he said.
AFP
