The president has gone from Marxist guerrilla to leader of the seventh biggest economy in the world, but her early popularity has collapsed, the country is in chaos and she may be impeached

If the sight of hundreds of thousands of Brazilians taking to the streets last Sunday demanding her impeachment perturbed President Dilma Rousseff, she showed no sign of it. That evening, she consulted five of her closest ministers to discuss the government’s response. They settled on a simple strategy: say nothing.

While arguably there was nothing to be said, the silence was also a hallmark of Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who became her country’s first woman president. “She trusts very few people,” Mauricio Savarese, a Brazilian political reporter and blogger, said. “She runs her government like a communist cell.”

This has proved both a strength and a weakness in a colourful career from student activist to technocrat to leader of the world’s seventh largest economy. In the 1970s, Rousseff was imprisoned and tortured during the military dictatorship without giving up the names of her comrades in the Marxist underground. Today, however, her unwillingness to engage in debate and build alliances is widely seen as a key factor in a political crisis that has seen her become the most unpopular president since the return of democracy in 1985.

Less than a year into her second term, the president is struggling with a fragmenting coalition, a faltering economy and the biggest corruption scandal in the country’s history. Hostility was only to be expected from the rich, white, middle-class families, but Rousseff has also disappointed many of those who put her into power.

Her predecessor, Luis Inácio Lula de Silva, built a broad coalition that embraced unions, student radicals, environmentalists and many in the middle class. His government was idealistically proactive on climate change, deforestation and foreign policy and pragmatic in its approach to the economy.

Under Rousseff, however, the Workers party has lost its shine. Diplomats privately admit the president has little interest in foreign policy. Environmentalists condemn her approval of a weakened forest code, dam-building in the Amazon and fossil fuel development by Petrobras.

Before her first presidential election campaign, in 2010, Rousseff had never run for elected office. In stark contrast to Lula, she lacks personal warmth . After she had plastic surgery in 2008 to soften her appearance, a widely circulated joke asked when she was going to get a personality makeover. Famed for her aggressive micro-management, she has little time for her own ministers. “She doesn’t like politicians. She is a technocrat,” Savarese said. “

The flipside of her abrasive character is a solid reputation for honesty. Not even her enemies accuse her of corruption. In a recent interview with the German magazine, Capital, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, of the opposition Brazilian Social Democratic party (PSDB), described her as “honourable”. Under her presidency, prosecutors have unearthed more wrongdoing than ever before.

But her unwillingness to engage in the boys’ club of Brazilian politics, where less than 9% of congress is female and corruption is routine, explains in part her current problems.

As minister for mines and energy under Lula, she took an undisguised dislike to Eduardo Cunha, then an ambitious congressman with an interest in the energy sector. During her first inauguration, she broke protocol by leaving Congress through the door she had entered, purely to avoid having to shake his hand as he waited by the exit.

Cunha, now speaker of the lower house, appears not to have forgiven or forgotten that slight. Despite belonging to party nominally allied to Rousseff’s, he ran against her candidate for the speakership and won.

Since then, he has proved the sharpest thorn in Rousseff’s side. Her attempts to rein in spending and raise taxes to sort out public finances have been thwarted by a hostile Congress, orchestrated by Cunha. Moreover, the tabling of impeachment proceedings is his prerogative alone. He has given indications he is willing to follow that route.

But on Thursday, the attorney general’s office charged Cunha with corruption and money-laundering, relating to a $5m bribe he allegedly took as part of the Petrobras scandal.

“This has given her something of a respite,” David Fleischer, a professor of politics at the University of Brasília, said. “Cunha’s role has been weakened somewhat. But of course, what could happen is that he just becomes so angry… that he goes after the president. We can’t be sure how he will react.”

She accepted an austerity policy – she had little choice, but the outcome has satisfied no one and dismayed many

Throughout the crisis, she has confided in just a few close advisers, chief among them ex-husband, Carlos Araújo.

Rousseff and Araújo met while both were active in leftwing militant groups in the late 1960s. Both were jailed and tortured. After the return of democracy, they settled in the southern city of Porto Alegre where Araújo, a labour lawyer, helped found the Democratic Workers party (PDT).

The couple had a daughter, Paula, born in 1976; they separated in 2000, but remain close. According to Rosane de Oliveira, a columnist for Zero Hora, Porto Alegre’s main newspaper, who has known Rousseff since the mid-1980s, Araújo is one of the few people she trusts and whose advice she heeds.

Rousseff returns to Porto Alegre regularly. Family is one of the few ways she unwinds, principally by watching Peppa Pig with her grandson, Gabriel, though she has told interviewers that her favourite films include 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Seduction of Mimi.

In the week before the demonstrations, Araújo travelled to Brasília to spend time with her. Back in Porto Alegre last week, he told Oliveira that there is no way Rousseff would even consider resigning. “Remember that she was tortured and she never betrayed her colleagues,” Oliveira said.

Rousseff has surprised her detractors before. She was a controversial choice to follow Lula, but initially proved a hit with voters, easily winning in 2010 and then riding an economic boom and pushing a wealth redistribution policy to notch up approval ratings of 80%.

The subsequent slowdown in growth eroded her standing, but she was still able to ride out street protests in 2013 and jeers from World Cup crowds the following year to secure re-election in 2014. In retrospect, that may have been a good campaign to lose.

Shorn of support in the legislature, Rousseff has compromised and compromised, accepting an austerity policy to placate the markets and inviting a motley crew of ideological opponents into her cabinet. She had little choice, but the outcome has satisfied no one and dismayed many.

Frei Betto, a leftwing Dominican friar, grew up on the same street in Belo Horizonte as the president. During the dictatorship, they worked together against the military government. He is now alarmed that Rousseff’s ditching of her principles will have dire consequences: “My biggest concern is that the fiscal tightening won’t work and the people are being sacrificed. This would cause a total loss of her credibility and the credibility of the Worker’s party.”

Part of her problem was her leadership style, he said. Although she listens to alternative views, she rarely engages in debate and often ignores advice.

“She is the wrong person for a system that demands a different kind of president,” says Ricardo Sennes, of the influential Gacint-USP thinktank.

He traces Brazil’s current crisis – the downturn, Lava Jato corruption scandal and ungovernable congress – back to 2011-12 when the coalition that Lula put together began to unravel with the departure of the Brazilian Socialist party (PSB).

Since then, allies have steadily abandoned the ruling camp.

Sennes believes the result is not polarisation, but fragmentation. “No one has a majority and everyone is blocking everyone else. I think this will go on until 2018, because there isn’t even a majority to remove Dilma.”

If he is right, Rousseff and Brazil will have to muddle through. The alternatives – resignation, impeachment or a coup – would probably be worse.

This dilemma appears to have been recognised by business leaders and the mainstream media, which have recently toned down their calls for the removal of the president for fear of the country losing its investor-grade credit rating. The irony of this will not lost on Rousseff, who may be wishing she had never won a second term – as if she would ever share such a thought.

THE ROUSSEFF FILE

Born Dilma Vana Rousseff on 14 December 1947. Her father, an ex-communist Bulgarian immigrant, was a lawyer and entrepreneur. Her mother worked as a school teacher. Growing up, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina, though this was quickly replaced by ambitions to join the leftwing movement against Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Best of times Introducing social welfare reforms that have lifted millions of Brazilians from extreme poverty.

Worst of times Hundreds of thousands of people taking part in protests calling for her impeachment this month.

What she says “Due to the fact that I experienced personally the situation of a political prisoner, I have a historical commitment to all those that were or are prisoners just because they expressed their views, their public opinion, their own opinions.”

What others say “People said she lacked political experience. I believe, however, that we gained with Dilma because she... does not fit the traditional way of doing politics in Brazil.”

Fernanda Montenegro, Brazilian film star and Oscar nominee