The AGU filed the request at noon Thursday, asking the STF to stop Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha from holding an official vote to rule on whether Rousseff should be impeached.
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The vote will begin with representatives from Brazil’s southern states, which tend to be strongly anti-Rousseff, and work up to the largely pro-government states at the end, in an apparent bid to create the impression of an unstoppable wave of support for impeachment.
The panel’s session stretched out all day and was marked by a prolonged shouting match ahead of the evening vote.
Rousseff has labeled Temer a traitor who is leading a “coup” against her, together with Cunha.
Vice President Michel Temer, whose PMDB party announced late last month that it was formally breaking with President Dilma Rousseff’s center-left Workers Party administration, would then become acting president.
Lawmakers who have yet to declare their position were facing fierce lobbying, including from Rousseff’s top ally and predecessor as president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
If fewer than two-thirds of the lower house approve the motion, Rousseff escapes impeachment.
Justices are still debating the question in the early hours of Friday, but the vote stands at 8-1 in favour of rejecting Rousseff’s claim that the procedures against her were “contaminated”.
Brazil’s largest political party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement party, or PMDB, had been Rousseff’s main coalition partner until it broke away two weeks ago, and said most of its members in the lower house will back her impeachment.
Brazilian newspapers O Globo and Estado de Sao Paulo both reported there were enough votes in the lower house to defeat the president on Sunday.
A congressional committee has recommended that the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff move forward, bringing the possible ouster of the embattled leader a step closer. He said discussion included the overall political crisis, the recession and a sprawling corruption probe at state oil company Petrobras.
Miguel Reale Junior, author of the impeachment petition, said Rousseff’s maneuvering directly led to the ills plaguing the country today, such as high inflation and periodic devaluations of the Brazilian real against the US dollar.
Brazil is “living in unusual times”, she said, “times of a coup, of farce and betrayal”.
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The president’s supporters say the issue is not valid grounds for impeachment. Yet Temer himself is hardly guaranteed a peaceful stay in the presidential office: allegations from plea bargaining witnesses have already tarred him with accusations of malfeasance; he has only 16 percent support in a recent poll; and the electoral court (TSE) could still move to remove him for campaign finance violations.
