International

More trouble for Rousseff as 47 politicians support her removal

Published

8 years ago

April 14, 2016

Embattled Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has more trouble on her hands after opposition leader of the Progressive Party (PP) informed that about 47 politicians from his party are supporting her impeachment.

Rousseff has thus lost another coalition partner before an upcoming parliamentary vote on her possible removal after the right-wing Progressive Party (PP) announced late on Tuesday that it was leaving the government.

The Brazilian president will know her fate in a parliamentary vote planned for Sunday and Ciro Nogueira, the PP leader says 47 politicians from his party would gladly support Rousseff’s removal.

This Sunday, two-third majority vote is required by the lower house of parliament on whether to start the process of having Rousseff removed from office, and if the vote passes this hurdle, the motion passes on to the upper house, or Senate, for approval.

The Brazilian Republican Party, which also left Rousseff’s coalition, has said its 22 members of parliament would also vote against the president, who is a member of the leftist Worker’s Party.

On Tuesday, Rousseff branded her vice president a traitor and said he was a conspirator in a “coup” using impeachment proceedings to bring down a popularly elected government.

“If there were any doubts about my denunciation that a coup is under way, there can’t be now. The coup plotters have a leader and a deputy leader,” she said in a blistering attack in the capital Brasilia on Tuesday.

Referring to the leak on Monday of a recording in which her vice president, Michel Temer, practises the speech he would make if Rousseff were impeached, the president said: “The mask of the conspirators has fallen.”

“We are living in strange and worrying times, times of a coup and pretending and treachery,” she said. “Yesterday they used the pretence of a leak to give the order for the conspiracy.”

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