Brazil’s top court rejects appeal to stop Rousseff impeachment vote

Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch attempt by President Dilma Rousseff to avert an impeachment vote in Congress early on Friday, sharply limiting her options to avoid a showdown with lawmakers who want to oust her.

The embattled president has lost support of key allies this week and is now even closer to a major defeat that would weaken an administration that is already struggling with the worst recession in decades, a sprawling scandal at state oil company Petrobras, and the outbreak of the Zika virus.

Rousseff’s attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, had asked the top court for an injunction to suspend Sunday’s lower house vote until the full court can rule on what he called procedural flaws in the impeachment process.

But the court dismissed the motion during a session that ran into the early hours. Justices voted 8-2 to deny Rousseff's appeal, saying it wasn't their role to get involved at this stage of the process.

Before the decision, a new survey by the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper showed for the first time that Rousseff’s opponents had already secured the 342 lower house votes needed to advance impeachment.

Eyes turn to Senate

Rousseff has seen support from within her governing coalition steadily erode.

If her impeachment is approved by the required two-thirds majority of 513 house members, the Senate will then have a trial to fully examine if Rousseff is guilty of breaking budget laws.

That could clear the way for Rousseff’s suspension and replacement by Vice President Michel Temer as soon as early May, pending a trial that could last six months.

Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, had not been expected to resort to the Supreme Court until after Sunday’s vote. Cardozo’s request to the court was seen as a sign, even before the latest newspaper survey, that her government now expects defeat.

Vowing to fight to the end, Rousseff met with her political advisers as her government scrambled for votes to block impeachment, but defections by several centrist allies in her coalition have seriously compromised that effort.

Brazil’s largest political party, the president’s main coalition partner until it broke away two weeks ago, said most of its members in the lower house will back deposing her.

Leonardo Picciani, the lower chamber leader for the party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, told reporters that 90 percent of the 68 members of his caucus would vote for impeachment.

‘Chaos will take hold’

If Rousseff is ousted, it would end the 13-year rule of her leftist Workers’ Party, which has lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and is overwhelmingly supported by the poor.

Rousseff is not being investigated in the massive graft scandal surrounding state-run oil company Petrobras that has reached into her inner circle. She denies she broke budget laws, but opponents allege that accounting tricks helped her win re-election in 2014 by boosting public spending.

Temer, who would serve out Rousseff’s term until 2018 if she is ousted by the Senate, has little popular support. He would face a daunting task restoring confidence in a country where dozens of political leaders, including close PMDB allies, are under investigation for corruption.

Rousseff’s Workers’ Party warned on Thursday that chaos will take hold of Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, if its democratically elected president is deposed.

“It’s a mistake to think that overthrowing a government will bring stability, peace, security and development,” the party’s leader, Rui Falcao, told reporters in Brasilia. “Not respecting the popular vote will plunge the country into chaos.”
(FRANCE 24 with AP, REUTERS)
15/4/16
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