Portside

After arguably the toughest week of her presidency, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff faces a fresh outpouring of public frustration this weekend when opponents will stage mass anti-government demonstrations and call for her impeachment.

The protest on Sunday comes amid the biggest corruption scandal in the country’s history, a growing catalogue of grim economic news and a recent poll indicating Rousseff is the most unpopular president since the return of democracy in 1985.

Supporters believe she is the target of a coup. Critics argue she is the victim of her own mismanagement. Whatever the cause, it is evident that less than a year into her second term, the Workers party leader is still struggling to assert her authority.

Last week, Rousseff’s ruling coalition was weakened by the desertion of the Democratic Labor party and the Brazilian Labor party. Erstwhile ally and lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha is now openly plotting against Rousseff.

With congress in revolt, the government’s austerity goals are being sabotaged by proposals to increase spending on police chiefs, prosecutors and lawyers. This has eroded the confidence of financial markets, pushing the Brazilian real to a 12-year low against the dollar.

The economy was already in trouble. GDP is forecast to shrink this year, while inflation and unemployment rise. On Tuesday, Moody’s downgraded Brazil’s credit rating to within a whisker of junk status.

Meanwhile, hanging over government and industry is the ongoing “Lava Jato” (Car Wash) investigation into the country’s biggest ever corruption scandal, at oil firm Petrobras.

Jairo Nicolau, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said the combination of the dire economy, governance problems and corruption scandal had created Brazil’s worst political turbulence in 30 years.

“I cannot remember having seen a crisis like this. Unlike others, there is no solution on the horizon. No one knows how to get to the other side.”

Public anger could be heard in many streets last Friday as residents opened their windows and clanged pots and pans in a traditional panelaço protest while Rousseff was speaking on television.

In the most recent poll by Dataolha last week, the president’s approval rating was a dismal 8% compared to the 71% who felt she was doing a bad or terrible job. The only president to have fallen anywhere near as low was Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned in 1992 during impeachment proceedings over a corruption scandal.

About two-thirds of voters support a similar ousting of Rousseff, according to Datafolha – even though there is no legal justification for impeachment. The lead prosecutor in the Lava Jato investigation acknowledged last week that he had found no evidence that Rousseff was involved in the corruption scandal at Petrobras.

That makes impeachment unlikely, but dirty politics could still trump legal niceties. The president’s enemies are considering several pretexts, including ongoing investigations into alleged budget irregularities and campaign finance violations.

A two-thirds majority in congress would be enough for them to launch impeachment hearings, during which the vice-president, Michel Temer, would hold power until a final decision is reached by the senate or supreme court.

This is the hope of the organisers of Sunday’s protest, which aims to add to the pressure on Rousseff to stand down. Some have set up a scoreboard-style website, placarforadilma.com, to track the numbers of congressmen ready to support impeachment.

Fernando Guarnieri, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University, says the president’s opponents are still some way from winning the numbers game in congress.

“The question is arithmetic. If there is no such majority there is no impeachment,” Guarnieri said. Whether there is the political will to go ahead with the move will be partly gauged by the scale and character of Sunday’s demonstration.

Unable to extinguish opposition on the streets or in congress, Rousseff has tried to create a fire-break in the senate.

On Monday night, she hosted a dinner at the Alvorado palace for her cabinet and 43 senators, who she asked to act a “force of moderation”. The president of the senate, Renan Calheiros, appeared to be on her side when he warned earlier that day that the president’s removal by congress would “set the country on fire”.

The Workers party plans to stage pro-Rousseff demonstrations of their own on Friday in conjunction with the Landless Workers Movement and the National Union of Students.

Former president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva has also gone on the counter-attack, blaming Brazil’s economic woes on international bankers. “The crisis was not born in Brasília. The crisis was born in the heartland of America, the crisis was born in the heart of Europe,” he said on Monday.

But the president is also losing support among traditional Workers party supporters. Many are aggrieved by the government’s austerity programme, which has hurt core constituencies. Last month, the government announced cuts of more than a billion reais (£196m) from spending on both education and healthcare.

In contrast, the budget for agriculture and livestock was raised by 20%, to maintain the backing of the farmers lobby, which Rousseff depends on for support.