Brazil’s Temer on the line as Congress considers trial

Bloomberg

Brazil’s Congress debates on Wednesday whether President Michel Temer will stand trial on corruption charges, a decision that could determine his political survival and country’s immediate economic outlook.
The plenary of the lower house of Congress started the debate shortly after 9 a.m. local time. Two-thirds of the chamber, or 342 lawmakers, must be present for the actual voting to start and finish. That makes it difficult to predict whether a result will come late in the night, on Thursday, or even next week.
“We believe the panel will show 342 lawmakers present, the question is whether they will be there when it’s time to vote — that depends a lot on the opposition,” Eliseu Padilha, Temer’s chief of staff, said on the eve of the debate. Lower house speaker Rodrigo Maia said it’s chamber’s obligation to vote by end of the day to clear the way for other important decisions. “The lower house needs to reorganize its economic agenda,” he told reporters in Brasilia, adding that the next priority is to approve a pension reform.
FAVORS FOR VOTES
The government expects between 270 and 280 of its supporters to show up. That would be more than enough to prevent the opposition from reaching the same two-thirds majority needed to put Temer on trial. Polls published by local newspapers showed there weren’t enough votes for that, even though more lawmakers were willing to accept the charges against the president than to reject them. The president would be forced to stand down if the trial started at Supreme Court.
Temer, whose government’s approval rating has dropped to only 5 percent, has personally lobbied over 160 legislators in recent weeks. On Tuesday he had lunch with at least 50 deputies from the agriculture caucus, offering to increase the government-mandated use of sugar cane-based ethanol.