MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Rousseff is a 'fighter' but “no one can hold on for 3.5 years with a 70% disapproval rating”

The vice president said economic improvement and better relations with Congress will be crucial to turning around Rousseff's political fortunes.

Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer said it would be difficult for head of state Dilma Rousseff to last until the scheduled end of her second presidential term in 2018 without a rise in her approval rating, which currently stands at just 8%, the local press reported Friday.

 “Her rating is really very low at the moment,” Temer said, adding that “no one can hold on for three and a half years” with such meager support and disapproval ratings of around 70%.

”If she stays (at this level), with 7 or 8% popularity, it will be tough,“ he said.

Temer made his remarks during a meeting Thursday with a group of business leaders in Sao Paulo, according to local news media, which uploaded audio recordings of the comments to their Web sites.

The vice president said economic improvement and better relations with Congress will be crucial to turning around Rousseff's political fortunes.

Brazil's economy has slipped into a technical recession, with no immediate relief in sight. The government is forecasting that GDP will shrink by 1.49% in 2015, while private-sector economists are projecting a 2.2% contraction.

In the political sphere, Rousseff has suffered a hit to her congressional support due in large part to a massive corruption scheme that cost Petrobras an estimated $2 billion over the course of a decade.

Firms paid bribes to secure inflated contracts with Petrobras, splitting most of the extra money with corrupt executives of the state-controlled company while setting aside some of the loot to pay off politicians who provided cover for the graft.

Dozens of politicians have been implicated in the scandal, most of them members of the ruling coalition, although Rousseff, who served as Petrobras' chair between 2003 and 2010, has not been accused of wrongdoing.

During the meeting, the business leaders asked Temer about pressure from opposition groups seeking to impeach Rousseff over the Petrobras scandal and fiscal maneuvers to disguise a budget gap last year.

Electoral authorities also are looking into accusations that funds diverted from Petrobras helped fund Rousseff's successful re-election campaign last year.

But Temer said he was not even considering the possibility that Rousseff could be removed from office by Brazil's top electoral court or would resign, adding that the president is ”a fighter.“

Institutional Communications Minister Edinho Silva, meanwhile, said Friday that Temer, whose PMDB party is Brazil's largest and controls both houses of Congress, remains ”loyal“ to Rousseff's Workers Party-led coalition.

He also downplayed Temer's statement that Rousseff could be forced out if Brazil cannot overcome its current crisis.

”Temer is a crucial figure for governability and is loyal to the president and Brazil's interests,“ Silva told the Globo television network after the vice president's controversial statements were uploaded to news sites.

”Those comments, if taken out of context, could be misinterpreted, but in the (proper) context it's clear that the vice president's goal is to unify the government in search of an improvement in its popularity,” Silva told Globo.

Temer also is working to help the country overcome its economic woes and severe political crisis stemming from the Petrobras scandal, he said.