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Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff addressed the nation in a defiant speech from outside the presidential palace, calling Senate’s decision to suspend her for 180 days “a coup”.
Rousseff said yesterday that what hurt her most was her understanding that she was what she called “a victim of a legal farce and a political farce”.
“When an elected president is suspended because of a crime I haven’t committed, the name we give is not impeachment, but a coup,” Rousseff said. “I may have made mistakes but I didn’t commit any crime,” she said. “The coup d’état threatens to undo true victories of last decade.”
She said she was proud to be the first woman to be elected president in Brazil and pledged to not give up the struggle against “the coup”.
“I’ve fought my entire life for democracy, I’ve had many victories,” she said, in reference to her youth fighting Brazil’s military dictatorship. “The struggle for democracy has no date and no deadline.”
Al Jazeera’s Latin America Editor Lucia Newman, reporting from Brasilia, said that the speech was “extremely emotional and very dramatic” with Rousseff’s voice shaking at one point.
“The president is going to her supporters outside the palace hugging them each as she prepares to leave the office for who knows how long,” she said. Newman said Rousseff’s trial was more of a political one than a technical one. “As we all know what she is being accused of is something that many presidents have done in the past, but they didn’t do it when the country’s economy was in deep recession,” she said. Rousseff, 68, has been in office since 2011. Her suspension came hours after the Senate voted 55-22 to put her on trial, a decision that ended more than 13 years of rule by the left-wing Workers Party. — Al Jazeera
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