Lula Attempts to Save Rousseff from Looming Impeachment Threat

03/29/2016 - 11h26

Brazil's former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva plans to help cobble together an eleventh hour coalition large enough to save his protégé and successor, President Dilma Rousseff, from a looming impeachment process in congress.

The PMDB, the biggest coalition partner of Mr Lula da Silva and Ms Rousseff`s ruling Workers' party, or PT, is expected to vote at a meeting on Tuesday (29) to break with the government, a move that could turn the odds against the president when congress meets to vote on impeachment, expected to be next month, analysts said.

Speaking to foreign journalists on Monday (28), Mr Lula da Silva said the PMDB, which has 69 members in the 513-seat lower house, was divided.

He would seek to secure sufficient support within the party to save the government even if the PMDB leadership, which is headed by a political heavyweight, Brazil vice-president Michel Temer, decided to break with Ms Rousseff.

"I suspect what will happen . . . is that the government will construct a base of support with individual PMDB congressmen and we will have a type of coalition without the agreement of the [PMDB] leadership," a relaxed looking Mr Lula da Silva said in the press conference.

Only 15 months into her second four-year term, Ms Rousseff`s government is struggling with a rebellious congress, a sweeping corruption scandal at state-owned oil company Petrobras that has hit her ruling coalition, and the country's worst recession in over a century.

The opposition has based its campaign for impeachment on allegations Ms Rousseff manipulated the budget to disguise a growing deficit and win elections in 2014.

It needs a two-thirds majority of the lower house to start the impeachment process, which will then go to the senate for debate, meaning Ms Rousseff must muster 172 votes to thwart the motion.

The PT and allied leftist parties that are explicitly anti-impeachment have 102 seats, according to numbers compiled by Eurasia Group, a research house.

In his press conference, Mr Lula da Silva said the impeachment process was not legal because the allegations - that Ms Rousseff massaged the public accounts - did not constitute a crime.

"What they are trying to do now in this country is shorten the mandate of President Dilma Rousseff via a coup," he said.

Mr Lula da Silva also chose Monday to launch a fierce counterattack against what his aides have described as a witch-hunt against him by "partisan" prosecutors, media and others intent on destroying his political career by linking him to the corruption scandal at Petrobras.

The political survival of Mr Lula da Silva, the founder of the PT and one of the country's most popular politicians with the poor, is considered by analysts as key to whether Ms Rousseff can withstand the impeachment process.

"Since President Dilma Rousseff's re-election, an army of journalists, police, prosecutors, attorneys and professional slanderers have been mobilised in order to find a crime - any crime - to accuse Lula and thus remove him from the political process," said a statement released by the Lula Institute, the former president's think tank.

Public prosecutors are investigating allegations that Mr Lula da Silva secretly enriched himself and his family through corruption and concealed the results, maintaining a beachside apartment and a rural getaway in the names of a friendly construction company and other contacts.

They are also probing payments to the Lula Institute by large construction companies involved in the Petrobras scandal and to LILS, a company through which he received compensation for making speeches following his presidency.

Mr Lula da Silva denies all the allegations. His lawyers say in spite of allegations in the media, he is not facing any formal charges. "I'm accused of having an apartment that I don't own, a rural property that I don't own," Mr Lula da Silva said.

The institute in its statement said the former president's lawyers had responded with a spate of 26 separate legal actions against his "detractors" in the media, congress and other areas, as well as requesting "rights of reply" through the courts on TV Globo, the country's dominant television network.

Referring to a controversial attempt by Ms Rousseff to appoint him to her cabinet this month, which critics alleged was to protect him from prosecution in the lower courts, Mr Lula da Silva said he simply wanted to help the president.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016