Brazil’s beleaguered President Dilma Rousseff shrank her cabinet and reshuffled ministers on Friday to bolster alliances within her coalition government and block efforts to impeach her.
Rousseff named former defense minister Jacques Wagner, a political heavyweight, as her chief of staff and put one additional cabinet post, the health ministry, under control of the PMDB, a center-right party that is her main ally and now controls seven of the government’s 31 ministries.
The moves come as Rousseff, politically hobbled less than a year into her second four-year term, grapples with a recession, overdrawn public finances, mounting Congressional opposition and a massive corruption scandal that has already ensnared senior political and corporate officials.
Rousseff said she was strengthening her coalition’s ties to lawmakers needed to help rebalance public finances.
In a largely symbolic cost-saving move, Rousseff eliminated eight of a previous 39 ministries by cutting lesser portfolios and merging others, such as labor and social security, and human rights with racial equality and women’s affairs.
She said ministers would take a 10 percent pay cut and that ministry expenses would by slashed by a fifth, partially through the elimination of 3,000 posts.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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