Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff entered the final straight Tuesday of a desperate battle to save her presidency ahead of an impeachment vote in Congress this weekend.
In a ruthless and complex contest, supporters and opponents of Brazil’s first woman President raced to amass the votes that will either send her to trial in the Senate or torpedo the procedure.
After a congressional committee voted to recommend Ms. Rousseff’s ouster late on Monday, the stage was set for this weekend’s showdown.
On Tuesday, the speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, was expected to present the formal impeachment document to the chamber. Deputies were then due to start debating on Friday with a vote pencilled in for Sunday. In the committee, a simple majority was enough to push the case along, but the full house requires a two-thirds majority, or 342 deputies, to send Ms. Rousseff’s case to the Senate. Anything less and Ms. Rousseff — accused of fiddling accounts to mask the dire state of the government budget during her 2014 reelection — will walk out with her job.
The latest survey of the 513 deputies in the lower house by Estadao daily on Monday showed 299 favouring impeachment and 123 opposed. That left the result in the hands of the 91 deputies still undecided or not stating a position. Ms. Rousseff and allies, led by ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have fought back hard in the last few days, describing the impeachment drive as a coup plot in disguise.
“I would never have thought that my generation would see putschists trying to overthrow a democratically elected president,” Mr. Lula told thousands of supporters Monday in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
