The power behind the throne

IN THE three decades since the restoration of democracy in Brazil, the centrist Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) has rarely been out of power. The two presidents with no PMDB ministers in their cabinets had cause to regret it. One was impeached with the party’s help. Another was humiliated by a congressional vote-buying scandal—precipitated, many reckon, by his reliance on small parties-for-hire. A maxim of Brazilian politics is that “no one governs without the PMDB.”

Governing with it is no picnic, either. The PMDB is an indispensable part of the coalition led by Dilma Rousseff, who belongs to the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT). Her vice-president, Michel Temer, is the PMDB’s chairman; the presidents of both houses of Congress are members. They have been cantankerous allies. Ms Rousseff has been beset by a sagging economy, high inflation and a huge bribery scandal at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil company. The PMDB has tortured her by weakening fiscal austerity, the basis of her economic policy, and by joining opposition parties in threatening impeachment.