Brazil’s President Stands Fast as Impeachment Move Grows

President Fernando Collor de Mello is stubbornly resisting powerful pressures for his resignation as informal polls in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress indicate that it is likely to impeach him on charges of dishonesty in office.

Mass protests in city streets, mutiny among Collor’s wavering political allies and rumblings of military impatience have left the president increasingly isolated in his Planalto Palace headquarters in Brasilia, the capital. Even some members of his Cabinet reportedly have suggested that he quit.

The cloud over Collor, 43, grew darker Saturday with publication of draft articles of impeachment calling for his “urgent” removal because he “has lost all moral authority to govern.” Collor’s denials of any involvement in corruption have had little impact.

In these crucial days for Latin America’s biggest nation, attention is turning to prospects for an orderly transfer of constitutional power to Vice President Itamar Franco. Outside Collor’s demoralized and shrinking force of supporters, it seems, hardly anyone is predicting that he will survive.

“I don’t think there’s any chance because he just went too far,” said political analyst Alexander Barros.

A congressional investigative committee has charged that Collor’s household received millions of dollars from an influence-peddling and graft racket headed by businessman Paulo Cesar Farias, the president’s former campaign treasurer. After the committee issued its report last week, Collor’s already crumbling authority began to collapse.

“Nobody is obeying, nobody respects the president anymore,” Barros said by telephone Saturday from Brasilia. Will Collor resign? “I think he will,” Barros said, but he added that capitulation might be a month or more away.

“Never, ever,” Collor’s spokesman said Thursday. “Whoever thinks he can persuade President Collor to resign is mistaken.” Saturday, the government news agency said Collor was taping a message for broadcast today or Monday in which he is expected to express certainty that he has enough votes in Congress to block impeachment.

Rosental Calmon Alves, editor of the newspaper Jornal do Brasil, said an unnamed Cabinet minister advised Collor that his resignation would alleviate the national crisis and avoid the humiliation of impeachment. The president listened to the minister “but discarded the possibility of resigning, assuring him that he still had many cards to play, political as well as juridical,” Alves said in a column Saturday.

One card would be to propose tough new legislation on campaign financing and punishment for corruption, Alves wrote, but he added: “It doesn’t seem credible that a presidential initiative would be capable of turning things around. The crisis has taken on a life of its own.”

The presidents of Brazil’s national press and bar associations are scheduled to present a formal request for impeachment to the lower house of Congress Tuesday. Jornal do Brasil published a draft text of the request, based on the investigative committee’s findings.

Collor has “lost all moral authority to govern the nation, as well as represent it internationally,” the request says. “Popular disrespect for him has put the institutions of the republic at risk. His removal from office, therefore, manifests itself as inevitable and urgent.”