In a session less electric than expected, Brazil’s suspended president proclaimed her innocence at her impeachment trial Monday, branding her vice president a “usurper”, calling the drive to oust her a “coup” and warning senators that history will judge them harshly if they oust a democratically elected leader on false charges.
Advertisement
The investigation has led to the jailing of senior businessmen and politicians, including in her Workers’ Party.
Brazilian senators have finished questioning suspended President Dilma Rousseff in her impeachment trial. The Cabinet that Temer put in place in May has been roundly criticized for its lack of diversity, and three of his ministers were forced to step down within a month of taking office because of corruption allegations.
“You are criminalizing fiscal policy”, she told senators.
“I can’t help but taste the bitterness of injustice”, she said of the process that will decide not only her fate but the nation’s political future.
Rousseff asserted that impeachment was the price she paid for refusing to quash a wide-ranging police investigation into the state oil company Petrobras, saying that corrupt lawmakers conspired to oust her to derail the investigation into billions in kickbacks at the oil giant.
The Workers’ Party under Rousseff and her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is credited with raising millions of Brazilians out of poverty.
If she loses the vote, as is widely expected, Michel Temer, the interim president and former vice president, will be president until the end of the current term in 2018.
“The constitution is clear”, she said.”It establishes that in order to start an impeachment process, there needs to be a crime”.
Reflecting the rising sense of divisiveness in the country, protests against Rousseff’s ouster emerged in various cities as she took the stand. Demonstrators shut down parts of Avenida Paulista, one of Sao Paulo’s main thoroughfares, as Rousseff was grilled by senators on Monday night.
But Rousseff, arguing that the loans were a commonly used fiscal stopgap, said she’d been accused “unjustly and arbitrarily”.
The political trial against Rousseff is in its final stages and the Senate will have to make a definitive decision on Tuesday or Wednesday on whether or not to depose her, according to the legislative chambers schedule.
The charges against Rousseff are “crimes of responsibility” and not criminal but administrative sanctions that could strip her from her post if 54 of a total of 81 senators vote in favor of her removal.
With many Brazilians assuming the result of the trial to be a foregone conclusion, there were scattered protests by Rousseff supporters on Monday but no sign of the massive demonstrations for and against impeachment that shook Brazil earlier this year.
Some exchanges were heated, but most were civil and traversed themes that the country has been wrestling with since an impeachment measure was introduced in the lower House of Deputies late a year ago, polarizing the nation.
“This is the second trial I have suffered in which democracy has sat with me in the dock”, she said, choking back tears as she recalled facing death when she was tortured day after day in detention. In May, the same body voted 55-21 to impeach and suspend her.
Rousseff is accused of using money from state banks to bolster spending during an election year in 2014. On Monday, several hundred supporters demonstrated outside Congress, cheering when Rousseff arrived. A huge wall was erected to separate her supporters and pro-impeachment activists. Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski opened the session saying he will remove anyone who applauds, boos or shouts any comments during the proceedings.
Advertisement
Associated Press writer Mauricio Savarese reported this story in Brasilia and AP writer Peter Prengaman reported from Rio de Janeiro.
