Suspended Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff on Monday told Brazilian senators in an emotional testimony at her trial that voting for her impeachment would amount to a “coup d’etat.”
Declaring her innocence and recalling how she was tortured under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, Rousseff warned that Latin America’s biggest country was on the verge of losing its democracy.
“Vote against impeachment, vote for democracy.... Do not accept a coup,” the 68-year-old leftist leader said as she defended herself before senators who are widely expected to remove her from office today.
About 2,000 supporters rallied in her support near the senate building in the capital Brasilia, waving flags — a fraction of the crowds her Workers’ Party has drawn in the past.
Protesters also massed in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, where they lit fires and riot police fired tear gas to disperse them.
Brazil’s first woman president is accused of having taken illegal state loans to patch budget holes in 2014 to mask the country’s problems as it slid into its deepest recession in decades.
Momentum to push her out of office is also fueled by deep anger at months of political paralysis and a vast corruption scandal centered on state oil giant Petrobras.
All indications pointed to the senate impeaching Rousseff when voting was to start yesterday, ending 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers’ Party.
Her last-minute defense started around 9:30am, with scores of senators scheduled to question her.
She was still talking and gesturing 12 hours later as the session wore on into the night.
During questioning that followed Rousseff’s 45-minute opening speech, pro-impeachment Brazilian Senator Simone Tebet said that as president, Rousseff had criminally mismanaged Brazil’s accounts by taking the unauthorized loans.
“An unreal Brazil was sold. The unreal numbers led to a loss of confidence among Brazilians and we are facing the worst financial crisis in the history of the country,” Tebet said.
However, Rousseff, arguing that the loans were a commonly used fiscal stopgap, said she’d been accused “unjustly and arbitrarily.”
“I’ve come to look your excellencies in the eye to say that I did not commit a crime,” she said in a calm, firm voice from the senate chamber podium.
However, there appeared to be little Rousseff could say to save her presidency.
Pro-impeachment senators said they will easily reach the needed two-thirds majority — 54 of 81 senators — to remove her from office.
In that case, Rousseff’s former vice president-turned political enemy, Michel Temer, would be confirmed as president until elections in 2018.
Temer, from the center-right PMDB party, has already been acting president since May, using his brief period in power to steer the government rightward.
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