Brazil’s largest opposition party is divided over how strongly to back a new interim government if it succeeds in having President Dilma Rousseff stripped of office, as it eyes a run at the presidency in 2018, senior members said on Monday.
The Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) will support a government led by Vice President Michel Temer from the aisles of Congress if the left-leaning Rousseff is unseated next month, but the party is split over whether to join his cabinet.
The Senate picked a committee stacked with supporters of impeachment that will report back on whether to put Rousseff on trial on charges of deliberately breaking budget laws to boost her re-election bid in 2014. Only five of the committee’s 21 members have declared their support for the leftist president.
The lower house voted this month there were grounds for a trial. If the Senate agrees to put her on trial in a May 12 vote, as expected, Rousseff will immediately be suspended from office for the period of the proceedings.
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