Brazilians Cry ‘Collor Out!’ as Panel Asks Impeachment : Politics: The decisive vote on the president by the full Chamber of Deputies is due next week.

“Collor Out!” the crowds are chanting in mass protests around Brazil these days. And these very well may be President Fernando Collor de Mello’s final days.

Increasingly isolated in his mid-century-modern palace, Collor warily watches a countdown in Congress across the street that may culminate with his impeachment next week. On Thursday, a special committee of the Chamber of Deputies overwhelmingly approved a motion to impeach Collor, 43, on corruption charges.

Leaders of the full chamber, Congress’ lower house, plan to call the decisive impeachment vote for Tuesday or Wednesday. If it occurs as anti-Collor forces predict, the president of Latin America’s largest country will be suspended from office for trial by the Senate before next week is out.

Collor’s supporters may try to prevent a quorum or stage a filibuster, but legislative leaders say a showdown is inevitable. “I believe that in the few days left of September, this matter will be decided,” Deputy Nelson Jobim, a Collor opponent, said Thursday.

Jobim drafted the special chamber committee’s impeachment motion, which said an analysis of evidence against Collor “makes explicit a description of criminal acts with the participation of the president of the republic.”

In the committee’s debate Thursday, Deputy Humberto Souto called the proceedings a “veritable legal lynching” and a “profound violence, not only to the rights of the president but also to the voters” who elected him in 1989.

Collor’s lawyers, in his written defense, said “the defendant is certain that he never committed any of the crimes” he is accused of. But the document did not specifically answer charges that Collor’s household received million of dollars from an influence-peddling and contract-skimming scheme operated by his former campaign treasurer.

Souto, leader of Collor’s voting bloc in the chamber, said the 10 days given the president to defend himself was insufficient to respond in full. Souto called on the full chamber to follow the 1868 example of the U.S. Senate, which failed to oust President Andrew Johnson, “in the only case of impeachment perhaps until now concluded.”

“The President of the republic at that time was maintained by one vote, and interestingly, it was the vote of a senator who had opposed the president of the republic,” Souto said. “Thus would I like to await the vote of the full chamber.”

Thursday night, the committee voted 32 to 1 for impeachment. Its report and motion will be read in the full chamber today.

The report is based on results of another chamber committee’s investigation of the affairs of Paulo Cesar (PC) Farias, a businessman and Collor’s former campaign chairman. Collor’s brother, Pedro, accused Farias of extorting millions of dollars in bribes from companies doing government business. The committee found evidence that $6.5 million in checks, from accounts under false names traced to Farias, went into accounts used to pay Collor’s private household expenses.

Collor denied any connection with Farias since he became president in March, 1990. But newspapers Thursday published reports that a special adviser to the president told police of compromising contacts. Dario Cesar Cavalcante, the adviser, asserted that he went several times to Farias’ charter company, Brasil Jet, “to pick up checks for paying Collor’s expenses,” the Rio newspaper O Globo said.

“He also said that PC talked frequently with the president by telephone--at least five times a week.”

The newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo said Thursday that members in favor number 374--well over the required two-thirds of the 503 total.

Collor’s allies are trying to postpone a final vote until after the first round of municipal elections Oct. 3.