MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Rousseff support plummets to 10%, while disapproval marks a record 65%

“It's a new record in Datafolha polls since we started conducting them in January 2011,” when Dilma took office, reported Folha de Sao Paulo

Public support for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has slipped to a record low, with her disapproval ratings rising to 65%, according to pollsters Datafolha and published on Sunday. Support for the embattled leader caught by a sliding economy and embroiled in a major graft scandal involving state-owned corporation Petrobras, slumped to 10%.

 The Datafolha poll published by Folha de S.Paulo says only 10% of those surveyed consider Brazil's government to be “great” or “good.” By contrast, 65% said the government is a “failure.”

“It's a new record in Datafolha polls since we started conducting them in January 2011,” when Dilma took office, reported Folha de Sao Paulo, which is owned by the same group as Datafolha.

Major protests have rocked Brazil in recent months, with some critics calling for her to be impeached.

A Datafolha poll in March indicated disapproval of 62%, the highest for a Brazilian president since September 1992 on the eve of the impeachment of then president Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned after Brazil's lower house voted to try him amid allegations of corruption.

The latest Datafolha survey involved 2,840 people in 174 municipalities and was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday with an error margin of plus/minus 2 percentage points.

The Petrobras scandal has implicated dozens of politicians, many of them Rousseff allies, and has seen support for the embattled president dive just months after she earned a second term.

Although Rousseff is a former Petrobras board chair, she herself is not under investigation over the multi-billion dollar kickback scheme, which has turned the once icon corporation of Brazil into the most indebted oil company in the world.