“Planalto Palace is playing with fire; there is dissatisfaction in the way the government deals with its allies, relations are not good, government should review this before August,” said Lincoln Portela head of the Party of the Republic Lower House block.
PR members have threatened to hand their posts in the cabinet and break off from government reported earlier this week Rio’s daily O Globo.
PR has 41 members in the Lower House and 7 Senators and in the event of a coalition resignation it could debilitate President Dilma Rousseff administration majority in Congress and governance of the seven months government.
Rousseff, who took office last January, has faced two major crisis, the first last June with the downfall of the powerful cabinet-chief Antonio Palocci from the ruling Workers Party who allegedly collected through his private consultancy from private corporations an estimated ten million dollars.
The second was triggered two weeks ago when Minister of Transport Alfredo Nascimento from the PR was forced to resign following revelations he had collected millions of dollars from contractors for the authorization of large public works
President Rousseff just sacked another fourteen top jobs in the Transport Ministry aggravating PR’s irritation which has begun to seriously consider abandoning the coalition.
In the Workers Party government there’s an “extended” corruption system, claimed opposition lawmaker Duarte Nogueira, head of the Brazilian Social Democracy, PSDB, benches in the Lower House and the main opposition force.
PSDB announced the creation of “a shadow cabinet” to follow and monitor government actions and accused former president Lula of leaving a “poisoned legacy” since he made the political agreement with the PR.
Lula, who is honorary president of the Workers Party, gave his support to the “cleansing” effort undertaken by President Rousseff but also said he was concerned, since clashes with PR “could contaminate the ten-party government coalition.”
“The PR is an allied party, there won’t be any rupture with government,” said Cândido Vacarezza head of the Lower House ruling Workers Party grouping.
However President Rousseff anticipated she would continue with the ‘depurations’ in government bureaucracy.