“No one here has the right to judge anybody”, she said.
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Brazil’s interim President Michel Temer reacts during a meeting with representatives of the construction industry at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, August 11, 2016.
Unofficially, Rousseff is taking the blame for Brazil’s slide into economic decline, mixed with a giant corruption scandal over state oil giant Petrobras. Rousseff served as Chief of Staff for Lula for five years, stepping down in 2010 to run her successful campaign for the presidency.
“And she always says that she has not been implicated in corruption while many of those who are judging her in the Senate, in Congress have been”.
The trial of the country’s first female president accused of breaking the budget law opened in Brazil’s capital on Thursday and is broadcast by major TV channels, radio stations and Internet portals.
Rousseff, who was tortured and imprisoned by the 1970s dictatorship for membership in a Marxist urban guerrilla group, swore to fight to the end against what she calls a coup.
The impeachment trial against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff began Thursday with the prosecution’s main witness disqualified.
The declarations of each witness will be heard individually, followed by three minutes allotted for questions from each senator and three minutes for answers.
However, her trial has become a test of political support for Rousseff amid the deepest recession in at least 80 years in Brazil.
If confirmed as president, Temer would need to curb Brazil’s deficit and put the economy back on track to emerge from the worst recession in decades. She is also a professor in the International Relations department at the University of Rio de Janeiro and the editor of the book Human Rights in Brazil. According to Brazilian non-profit Transparência Brasil, 60% of Brazil’s federal legislators have been convicted or are under investigation for crimes ranging from corruption to electoral fraud. Even Rousseff’s own political party, the Workers’ Party, has largely abandoned her.
If Rousseff is removed, Temer must be sworn in by the Senate. If she is impeached, Temer would finish out the term, which ends in 2018.
In the meantime, the ongoing Petrobras investigation has engulfed many politicians, both in Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and Temer’s Social Democrats, eroding support for Brazil’s political class in general.
“Michel wants to remain president, but he can’t show himself to be trying to do that”, Brasilia-based political consultant Alexandre Barros said.
The leftist leader, whose popularity has been hammered by a deep recession and enormous corruption scandal since she won reelection in 2014, will appear before the 81 senators on Monday to defend herself.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will not get a vote in Senate this year.
Rousseff faces charges of illegally manipulating finances to hide a growing public deficit ahead of her re-election in 2014.
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Earlier this month, 59 senators voted to move forward with the trial.
