Addressing the Senate that will rule on whether to dismiss her from office, Dilma Rousseff says her opponents are trampling on democracy by using trumped-up charges to oust her.
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“These and other lies were attributed in an irresponsible and frivolous way to the interim government”, it said.
Temer’s finance minister, Henrique Meirelles, has said his priority is to curb government spending and pass a pension reform.
Two Brazilian social groups called for protests and gathered in the city’s main avenue with signs against Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice president who has been the acting leader since she was suspended in May pending the impeachment trial.
Brazil’s Rousseff says “future of Brazil at stake” in Senate trial was posted in World of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on August 30, 2016 and was last updated on August 30, 2016.
Rousseff began her defence by reminding senators that she had been re-elected by more than 54 million voters.
“In a 45-minute speech that drew on her personal and political history, the former leftist guerrilla inveighed against “ultraconservative” interests determined to remove Brazil”s first woman president from power.
“It is clear there has been no crime”, she said, emphasizing that she has honored her commitments to uphold the constitution and rule of law. If she is impeached, Temer will become the country’s new president until the general election in 2018.
What do the polls say about Rousseff?
Her conviction would also spell the final upending of nearly 15 years of control by her leftist Workers Party, which swept to power in Brazil when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003. Senator Helio Jose, who was the Rousseff government’s deputy whip in the Senate, has not declared his vote.
Ms. Rousseff repeated her accusation that the impeachment process is really an attempted coup d’é tat.
Lulu said the speech was never really going to be about persuading senators to vote against Rousseff’s impeachment.
People walk next to an official photography of Brazil’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff, with a text written in Portuguese that reads “Dilma our president”, at a camp in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016.
Rousseff’s appearance came on the fourth day of the trial which has seen name-calling, shouting and a declaration by the Senate President Renan Calheiros that “stupidity is limitless”. Rousseff, 68, was greeted by cheering supporters as she arrived in the Senate to testify for the first time in her defense, just hours before senators were to start voting on her fate.
She said that even when she was tortured she continued to fight. With the odds stacked against Rousseff, her testimony appears to be aimed at making a point for the history books that her impeachment was a travesty that would undo the social gains of the past decade.
She was scheduled to speak at 9 a.m., but the session was only opened by the President of the Supreme Federal Court, Ricardo Lewandowski, at 9:42.
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“Today there is no illegal detention, no torture, my judges came here for the same popular vote I led to the presidency … but I keep looking at them with my head up and suffering again with the feeling of injustice and suspicion from democracy is betrayed”, she said.
