Brazilian President, Ms Dilma Rousseff, yesterday took her battle to survive impeachment to the country’s Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to stay in office a day before the Senate will likely vote to put her on trial for breaking budget laws.
Attorney General Eduardo Cardozo, the government’s top lawyer, asked the Supreme Court to annul impeachment proceedings arguing they were politically motivated and had no legal basis.
“I will not resign, that never crossed my mind,” Rousseff said in a speech to a conference hall full of women supporters who cheered when she vowed to keep fighting her removal from office.
But the leftist leader appeared resigned to leaving the presidency after a Senate vote on Wednesday that is expected to suspend her, pending trial. In her office at the modernistic Planalto presidential palace in the capital, Brasilia, aides had already packed up her papers and cleared the shelves.
The political crisis has erupted at a time when Brazil had planned to be shining on the world stage, as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
Earlier in the day, the acting speaker of the lower house of Congress, Waldir Maranhao, withdrew his controversial decision to annul last month’s impeachment vote in the chamber. That meant Cardozo’s appeal to the top court may be the president’s best hope of stopping the process from moving forward.
If a simple majority agrees to put her on trial, Rousseff will be suspended from office on Thursday, leaving Vice President Michel Temer in power for up to six months during her trial. If Rousseff were convicted and removed definitively, Temer would stay in the post until elections in 2018.
With the prospect looming of an end to 13 years of rule by Rousseff’s leftist Workers Party (PT), anti-impeachment protesters blocked roads in Sao Paulo, Brasilia and other cities, snarling morning traffic.
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