Brazil impeachment drive accelerates, Lula fights back

Brazil's struggling leftist government was battling on two fronts today as impeachment proceedings resume against President Dilma Rousseff and legal battles plague her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Rousseff's presidency appears to be in peril as she fights impeachment, protests, recession and scandal, and her decision to call Lula to the rescue backfired last week when a judge blocked his nomination as chief of staff over pending corruption charges.
A congressional impeachment committee was to hold its second session today to weigh allegations that Rousseff fudged the government's accounts to boost public spending during her 2014 re-election campaign and downplay bad news on the Latin American giant's sinking economy.

Lula, a left-wing icon tarnished by corruption charges, meanwhile is fighting a Supreme Court injunction blocking his political comeback -- and the ministerial immunity that comes with it.
Lula (2003-2011) faces money-laundering charges linked to a multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras.
Prosecutors have requested his arrest -- a threat he will escape if he can get the courts to let him take up his cabinet post, since ministers can only be tried before the Supreme Court in Brazil.

Lula's lawyers appealed Sunday to the Supreme Court to annul a ruling by one of its judges suspending his appointment and sending his case back to criminal court.

His foundation, the Lula Institute, lashed out at what it called a "series of arbitrary actions" by the judiciary.
It condemned Lula's detention for questioning earlier this month as "violent, coercive... And baseless," and said the request for his arrest is "arbitrary" and "unconstitutional.