Brazil is bracing itself for another week of drama, in which the Supreme Court and Congress will chart the path through the nation’s political crisis after a poll showed two-thirds of its citizens want President Dilma Rousseff ousted.
The Attorney General’s office over the weekend called on the Supreme Court to quickly and definitively settle a legal dispute over former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s appointment to become Rousseff’s chief of staff. Several injunctions preventing Lula from taking office have alternately been imposed and lifted, with the latest ban for him to join her cabinet coming from Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes late on Friday.
The administration hopes Lula can rebuild support in Congress to avoid Rousseff’s impeachment on allegations that she doctored budget results and that her re-election campaign in 2014 received graft money. Critics say she brought Lula into the cabinet to shield him from a possible arrest related to the corruption probe into state-run oil company Petrobras, known as Carwash. Both Rousseff and Lula have denied such a maneuver as well as any wrongdoing.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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