Brazil’s Rousseff reshuffles cabinet to keep allies on board

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s beleaguered President Dilma Rousseff shrank her cabinet and reshuffled ministers yesterday to bolster alliances within her coalition government and block efforts to impeach her.

Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff

Rousseff named former defence minister Jacques Wagner, a political heavyweight, as her chief of staff and put one additional cabinet post, the health ministry, under control of the PMDB, a centre-right party that is her main ally and now controls seven of the government’s 31 ministries.

The moves come as Rousseff, politically hobbled less than a year into her second four-year term, grapples with a recession, overdrawn public financ-es, mounting Congres-sional opposition and a massive corruption scandal that has already ensnared senior political and corporate officials.

Rousseff said she was strengthening her coalition’s ties to lawmakers needed to help rebalance public finances.

“My government is seeking support in Congress,” she said in a speech. “We need political stability for Brazil to grow.”

To deal with the shifting alliances, Rousseff picked Wagner, a former two-time state governor and close ally of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The former president was in the capital this week advising Rousseff, his protégée and successor.

Rousseff named former sports minister Aldo Rebelo, a longtime ally of the ruling Workers’ Party, as the new defence chief.

In a largely symbolic cost-saving move, Rousseff eliminated eight of a previous 39 ministries by cutting lesser portfolios and merging others, such as labour and social security, and human rights with racial equality and women’s affairs.

She said ministers would take a 10 per cent pay cut and that ministry expenses would by slashed by a fifth, partially through the elimination of 3,000 posts.

Opposition leaders said Rousseff’s cost cutting was a sham and she would continue to have trouble getting tax bills passed. But the PMDB’s lower house leader Leonardo Picciani, who negotiated inclusion of two of his caucus members in the new cabinet, told Reuters the risk of impeachment had subsided.