Brazil’s suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, mounted a defiant and emotional defense of her herself, her presidency, and her accounting practices during her impeachment trial in the country’s senate on Monday.
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Op position senators accused her of breaking fiscal responsibility laws to hide holes in the budget, saying that exacerbated a recession which has led to 10% inflation.
The trial examines whether Rousseff is guilty of manipulating government accounts to obscure the country’s deteriorating budget situation during her 2014 re-election campaign.
Brazil’s suspended President, Dilma Rousseff has appeared before the Senate to testify at her impeachment trial.
“We are one step away from a real coup d’etat”, she told the Senate. Her impeachment would bar her from office for eight years.
In a statement, Temer’s office denounced the comments as “false accusations”.
Rousseff’s supporters in the chamber included her once hugely popular predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Brazilian singer and heartthrob Chico Buarque.
Rousseff faces no allegations of personal enrichment.
She urged the Senate to vote against impeaching her. She chaired the board from 2003 to 2010, when the worst of the corruption was taking place.
Now, the democratic break happens through moral violence and constitutional pretexts to give legal appearance to a government that is assumed without support from the polls, she stated, adding that they refer to the Constitution for the world of appearance to cover, hypocritically, the world of facts.
It came the day before senators begin voting on whether to kick the leader, suspended since May, out of office for good.
” ‘Now I am afraid for the death of democracy'”.
Supporters of suspended president Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff protest in front of the Brazilian National Congress on August 29.
Ms Rousseff began her defence by reminding senators that she had been re-elected by more than 54 million voters.
A woman under an umbrella has a piece of ribbon that reads in Portuguese “Dilma come Back”, at a camp in support of Brazil’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff, in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016. Due to their long friendship, Anibal said he supported Rousseff in the presidency until around 2012. “It looks like they will get their way”.
Nearby, a smaller group of a few dozen pro-impeachment demonstrators gathered at another point near the Senate, kept apart by police from the Rousseff supporters.
When she finished speaking, many senators applauded, prompting Mr Lewandowski to suspend the session.
Despite that work, it was Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice-president and the mastermind behind her impeachment trial, who was leading the government during the Olympics.
A full one-third of the members of the Senate are under investigation for corruption, graft, fraud or electoral crimes, according to Congresso em Foco, a prominent watchdog in Brasilia.
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Although Rousseff spoke mostly in a measured tone, her voice cracked and she appeared close to tears while recalling her suffering as a young leftist guerrilla and in battling cancer. Rousseff noted today she was the victim of blackmail, saying the only reason her job is on the line is because she refused to end the investigation of former lower house president Eduardo Cunha.
