BRASILIA, Brazil �� Three weeks after a corruption scandal rocked Latin America's largest nation, Brazilian President Michel Temer looks ready to stay in power, albeit with his political capital severely depleted.
The most immediate threat to Temer ended Friday when he was acquitted of illegally financing his 2014 election campaign. A guilty verdict would have forced him to step down, throwing Brazil further into disarray.
"It looks like he'll survive but he'll never fully recover the political capital he had," said Thomaz Favaro, associate director for Brazil and the Southern Cone at Control Risks consultancy. "He will have to downsize his reform agenda."
Many of Temer's allies, weakened by corruption allegations and reluctant to further destabilize Brazil's rattled political establishment, are now less likely to abandon the president. The largest coalition partner, the PSDB party, scheduled a meeting for Monday at which it is expected to pledge support for the government's economic measures and decide whether to keep its Cabinet posts.
"I'm in favor of not leaving," said the PSDB's deputy leader in the lower house, Luiz Carlos Hauly. "It doesn't help much to exit now and leave behind 14 million unemployed."
Temer's aides believe he already has enough votes to head off impeachment or an indictment by the Supreme Court should the prosecutor-general file charges against him, according to a Cabinet member who tracks the government's votes in Congress. By law, a two-thirds majority is needed in the Chamber of Deputies for impeachment proceedings to begin or for the Supreme Court to put a president on trial.
But that was before news magazine Veja reported Saturday that Temer ordered the country's intelligence service to pry into the life of Supreme Court Judge Edson Fachin, who is in charge of the ongoing corruption investigation, which has targeted the president and numerous other political and business figures.
Temer quickly denied the report, which prompted the country's Supreme Court justice, Carmen Lucia Rocha, to issue a harsh statement calling for a thorough investigation, and likening the alleged practice to that of dictatorships.
There are plenty of other reasons why legislators facing elections next year would want to abandon Temer. Aside from his highly unpopular austerity program, the president's approval rating is in the single digits and he has now been swept into an epic corruption scandal that has already imprisoned dozens of business executives and politicians.
Yet many prefer the status quo because of a lack of consensus on a replacement for Temer, uncertainty about what a newcomer might mean for economic recovery, and the fear of retaliation against deserters.
"The logic is that it's better to keep your head down because of what they may know about you," said Sen. Jose Medeiros of PSD, a mid-size party in Temer's ruling coalition. "We pull Temer out and put who in his place?" he said about the lack of obvious alternatives.
Temer has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has said he won't resign. But he risks being implicated in further scandals. In addition to the weekend's spying allegations, last week the president had to acknowledge reports that he got a ride on a private jet owned by the businessman who accused him of a cover-up and authorizing the payment of hush money.
There is also the risk of testimony from former aides arrested in recent weeks. One of them is Rodrigo Rocha Loures, a legislator who prosecutors suspect acted as a criminal operator on the president's behalf.
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(Ana Carolina Siedschlag and Patricia Lara contributed to this report.)
