Brazil president teeters on edge of impeachment proceedings

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff won a temporary reprieve today from threatened impeachment thanks to a Supreme Court intervention and her principal opponent's decision to hold off for now on opening proceedings.
Brazil's highest court ordered an injunction on any impeachment moves after a request lodged by congressional deputies from Rousseff's ruling Workers' Party. The decision was based on procedural questions over lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha's methods for instituting impeachment.
The decision gave Rousseff -- deeply unpopular less than a year into her second term amid steep recession and a huge corruption scandal -- a breather as she scrambles to secure backers in Congress.

Meanwhile, Cunha said he was briefly delaying a final decision on the several impeachment requests pending in Congress. He had previously been seen as preparing to trigger the procedure as early as Tuesday.
"He will wait until next week before taking a decision," a spokesman for the speaker's office told AFP.
As speaker Cunha has the power to shelve such requests or give them the green light, triggering a bruising battle that risks sending Latin America's biggest country from its current mix of instability and economic paralysis into full-blown crisis.

Cunha's next move is seen by analysts as being bound up with his own struggles to escape corruption allegations, including that he hid millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts.

The impeachment request seen as most likely to be given the go-ahead alleges that Rousseff illegally manipulated government accounts ahead of her reelection in 2014.
Although experts disagree about the solidity of the legal case against the former leftist guerrilla, the impeachment threat is widely seen as posing a mortal threat to her political credibility, already weakened by the wider crisis in the country.
Rousseff says moves against her are a "coup plot."
Spokesman Edinho Silva said: "Impeachment is only justified if there is a legal basis and there is no legal basis."
If Cunha launches proceedings, the impeachment would go to a commission including representatives from all parties before being submitted to a vote in the lower house, requiring two thirds of deputies to pass. The Senate would then start an impeachment trial against Rousseff.