Rousseff impeachment trial: ‘Future of Brazil at stake’
BRASILIA (Reuters) – Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff told the Senate on Monday that the future of Brazil was at stake in her impeachment trial, and that her conservative opponents were using trumped-up charges to oust her and roll back social advances of the past 13 years.
The leftist leader, appearing before the Senate to defend herself in a process expected to remove her from office this week, said Brazil’s economic elite and political opposition had sought to destabilize her government since her 2014 reelection.
Rousseff denied charges of breaking budgetary rules and denounced the nine-month impeachment process that has paralyzed Brazilian politics as a plot to overthrow her and protect the interests of Brazil’s privileged classes, including the privatization of public assets such as massive subsalt oil reserves.
“What we are about to witness is a serious violation of the constitution and a real coup d’etat,” Rousseff said.
She warned that a conservative government would slash spending on social programs and reverse gains in the fight against poverty made during the last decade.
“The future of Brazil is at stake,” she said.
Several hundred supporters chanted “Dilma, warrior of the Brazilian nation” outside Congress when her motorcade arrived.
A deep recession, for which many Brazilians blame her, and a huge corruption scandal involving state-run energy company Petrobras have undermined Rousseff’s popularity since she was reelected in 2014.
Vice president Michel Temer has been interim president since mid-May, when Rousseff was suspended, after Congress decided it would continue the impeachment process that began in the lower house.
If the Senate convicts Rousseff on Tuesday or Wednesday, as expected, Temer, 75, will be sworn in to serve the rest of her term through 2018. His business-friendly government vows to take unpopular austerity measures to plug a growing fiscal deficit that cost Brazil its investment-grade credit rating last year.
Appealing to undecided senators, Rousseff, 68, pointed to a lifetime fighting for democracy, from her arrest and torture by a military dictatorship for belonging to a left-wing guerrilla group, to election as Brazil’s first female president.
Twenty of her former cabinet ministers were in the Senate gallery to support her, along with her political mentor, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, founder of the Workers Party.
With the odds stacked against her, Rousseff’s testimony appears aimed at making a point for the history books that her impeachment is a travesty, rather than a bid to sway the 81-seat Senate to block her ouster.
Temer is confident he has the two-thirds of the chamber needed to remove Rousseff, and he has planned an address to the nation on Wednesday before heading to China to the G20 group summit of leading economies.
“We need 54 votes and we expect to get at least 60,” Temer’s press spokesman, Marcio de Freitas, told Reuters.
Freitas said the more votes Temer received, the stronger his mandate would be to take the difficult measures needed to restore confidence in Brazil’s economy, which is caught in a two-year recession.
Rousseff is accused of using money from state banks to bolster spending during the 2014 election year. She says the money had no impact on overall deficit levels and was paid back in full the following year.
A survey published by the O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper on Monday predicted 53 senators would vote against Rousseff and only 19 would back her – nine short of the 28 she needs to avoid impeachment. Nine senators have not stated their position.
But even some senators unconvinced that the accounting charges brought against Rousseff warrant her removal will vote against her because they do not believe she has enough support to govern any more and end Brazil’s political crisis.
“I will vote against her even though I think it is a tragedy to get rid of an elected president, but another two and a half years of a Dilma government would be worse,” centrist Sen. Cristovam Buarque said in a phone interview.