Brazil’s governing coalition faced collapse on Tuesday as the main partner to Dilma Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party prepared to quit, leaving the embattled President — who also faces impeachment — i
Brazil’s governing coalition faced collapse on Tuesday as the main partner to Dilma Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party prepared to quit, leaving the embattled President — who also faces impeachment — in dire straits.
Leaders of the PMDB, the country’s largest party, said that a decision to break with the Workers’ Party was almost certain at a meeting which was due later on Tuesday.
“It will be an exit meeting, a goodbye to the government. We calculate we have a vote of more than 80 per cent in favor of quitting,” said PMDB legislator Osmar Terra.
“There has been a series of dominoes falling, and it cannot be turned back,” he said.
Ms Rousseff, who is fighting recession, street protests, a mammoth corruption scandal, and the push in Congress for her impeachment, met PMDB ministers on Monday to try to convince them to stay.
But a spokesman for party leader Michel Temer — who as Ms Rousseff’s vice-president will become interim President if she is impeached — said that the only hold-up to an exit was a final decision on how long to give PMDB Cabinet members to leave their posts.
Already on Monday, tourism minister Henrique Alves resigned, saying time had “run out” on the President.
The PMDB, the mostly centrist and largest party in Brazil, has long been an awkward partner for Rousseff’s Workers’ Party.
