Rousseff accuses deputy of coup plot

BRASILIA — Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff took off the gloves Tuesday, branding her vice president a traitor and coup-plotter ahead of an impeachment vote in Congress, with a party once in the ruling coalition set to cast a ballot against her. In a blistering speech, Rousseff, 68, charged: “If there were any doubts about my reporting that a coup is under way, there can’t be now.” Referring to Monday’s leak of an audio recording in which Vice President Michel Temer practices the speech he would make if Rousseff is impeached, the president said: “The conspirators’ mask has slipped. “We are living in strange and worrying times, times of a coup, and of pretending, and betrayal of trust,” she said in the capital Brasilia. “Yesterday, they used the pretense of a leak to give the order for the conspiracy.” Rousseff is in the final stretch of a bruising attempt to save her presidency from impeachment on charges that she illegally manipulated government accounts to mask the effects of recession during her 2014 re-election. Temer, who will take over if Rousseff is impeached, countered that a war was being waged against him on both a personal and professional level. “I’m not waging war, I’m defending myself,” he told Globo News. But making it clear he was ready to step in Rousseff’s shoes, Temer, 75, added: “Without being pretentious, but with much modesty, I must say that I have a lot of experience in public life.” After a congressional committee voted to recommend Rousseff’s ouster in chaotic and bad-tempered scenes late Monday, the stage was set for a weekend showdown in the full lower house. Deputies were due to start debating Friday, with a decisive vote on Sunday, officials said. “Voting will begin on Sunday at 2:00 pm (1700 GMT) and we calculate that the result will be late that evening,” a spokesman for the speaker’s office said. If the house reaches a two-thirds majority, or 342 deputies, Rousseff’s case is sent to the Senate. Anything less, and Rousseff will walk away with her job. The latest survey of the 513 deputies in the lower house by Estadao daily showed 300 favoring impeachment and 125 opposed. That left the result in the hands of the 88 deputies still undecided or not stating a position. Then, after hours of meetings, the Progressive Party announced it has decided to pull out of the ruling coalition, and that most of its 47 lawmakers will vote for her to be impeached. The PP is one of the larger parties previously largely favorable to her. Rousseff is hugely unpopular as Brazil sinks into its worst recession in decades. The political system has also been paralyzed by a huge corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras. — AFP