Mr Cardozo’s request to the court was seen as a sign, even before the latest newspaper survey, that her government now expects defeat.
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(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres). A demonstrator takes part in demonstration in support of the impeachment of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, in front of the Supreme Court, in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, April 14, 2016.
The outcome had been widely expected, and it was largely symbolic because no matter the outcome of the vote, the matter would still have gone to the full lower house for a crucial vote expected at week’s end on whether to send the matter to the Senate for a possible trial. He said discussion included the overall political crisis, the recession and a sprawling corruption probe at state-run oil company Petrobras.
Earlier this week, the Progressive Party (PP) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) left Rousseff’s coalition.
Rousseff met with her political advisors on Thursday as her government scrambled to win over undecided voters to block impeachment, but defections by several centrist allies in her diminishing coalition have seriously compromised that effort. He said Temer would bolster concessions in public housing, basic sanitation and urban transportation and offer investors better terms on those projects, avoiding the mistakes of the Rousseff administration that wanted a lower internal rate of return.Brazil is “living in unusual times”, she said, “times of a coup, of farce and betrayal”.
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.
Brazil’s lower house of parliament has begun a debate ahead of a vote on Sunday on the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
She hoped the Supreme Court would be sympathetic to her lawyer’s claims that the impeachment proceedings had been turned into an open-ended attack that disregarded legal norms.
Brazil’s Supreme Court overturned a government motion and allowed voting on impeachment to continue as scheduled on Sunday, delivering a blow to Dilma Rousseff as she struggles to keep her presidency.
Her opponents say the impeachment process is in line with the wishes of the majority of Brazilians, while Rousseff’s supporters call it a blatant power grab by her foes.
PMDB quit the coalition on March 29.
The PMDB’s leader in the lower house, Leonardo Picciani, said on Thursday that 90% of the party’s members would vote to impeach Ms Rousseff.
Rousseff has described the move as a “coup” orchestrated by Vice President Michel Temer and Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha. “[If there is not a 2/3 majority] the impeachment process will be abandoned”.
But those enticements only work if lawmakers have faith that Rousseff will actually survive, and they increasingly do not.
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Ms Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, had not been expected to resort to the Supreme Court until after Sunday’s vote.
