'Calm' amid impeachment fight

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said Saturday she was "calm" about defeating an impeachment bid and convinced that a key ally will not desert her, despite reports of cracks in her coalition.
A special commission is due to start forming Monday with representatives of all Congressional parties to hear Rousseff's defense and decide whether the impeachment case should be sent for examination by the full house.

Visiting the city of Recife in the northeast of Latin America's biggest and most powerful country, Rousseff said Saturday she was ready for the battle.

She sought to counter speculation that her vice president, Michel Temer, would desert her -- a move that experts say would be potentially fatal to her chances of gathering enough votes to defeat impeachment.

"I have complete confidence in Michel Temer as a person and as a politician," she said.

Both Rousseff's camp and the opposition were jockeying over the exact make-up of the commission, which has the power to reject the impeachment entirely.
If, as expected, the commission rules in favor of trying Rousseff over allegedly illegal government accounting practices, the leftist president's survival will depend on keeping her fragile ruling coalition intact.

The most powerful member in the alliance is not Rousseff's Workers' Party but Temer's PMDB.

Brazilian media buzzed with speculation over the weekend on whether Temer will now stick with Rousseff or abandon her, hoping to engineer her downfall and, as required by the constitution, become interim president.

- Warning signal? -

An early sign that Rousseff cannot count on the PMDB are the still unconfirmed reports that her civil aviation minister, Eliseu Padilha, has tendered his resignation. Padilha is in the PMDB and considered close to Temer.
"If this departure is not reversible, I think it is a very great loss," Social Communications Minister Edinho Silva told Folha newspaper Saturday.

However, Rousseff said she had no information about Padilha's plans.

"I still don't know if Minister Padilha made a final decision because he has not talked with me," she said. "So I count on Padilha remaining in government."

Silva also expressed optimism, saying, "there doesn't have to be a falling apart or an exit. It's not in Vice President Michel Temer's profile to abandon the government."

- Political mathematics -

The Rousseff camp, which calls the impeachment "a coup," suffered a setback Friday when the Supreme Court ruled against two requests for an injunction against the process. One more remains to be decided on.

If impeachment goes to the full lower house, Rousseff needs 171 votes -- one third of the deputies -- to clear herself. The same conditions would apply if the case passed in the Chamber of Deputies and went on to the Senate.

However, even now she can only count on a safety margin of about 50 votes, O Globo newspaper reported. If Temer were to pull out, her main remaining hope would likely be to play on splits within the PMDB, parts of which favor her staying.

Although Rousseff's allies publicly insist that Temer will stand by the president, he has pointedly said nothing since Rousseff's chief enemy, lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha -- also a member of the PMDB -- launched the crisis late Wednesday.

Privately, the Workers' Party and the president think Temer has already made his decision, O Dia newspaper reported.

"In the view of the presidency, Vice President Michel Temer is working for Dilma Rousseff's impeachment. The resignation of the minister Eliseu Padilha, closely linked to Temer, and conversations between the vice president and members of the opposition... make it clear," the report said.

Rousseff, 67, sounded upbeat at her event in Recife, repeating her insistence that she had committed no act of corruption or other crime and that the accounting methods she used had been accepted practice under many previous governments.

Answering a journalist who asked if she was worried, she said with a smile: "I'm not worried, dear. I am old."
Source: AFP