Mujica: Dilma was deposed for rejecting corruption
Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, now a senator, said that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, elected in 2014, was deposed because she resisted the pressure to protect politicians accused of corruption.
“This woman is being condemned for not engaging in corruption,” said Mujica while attending the launching of a day’s conference on labor unions in South America.
The former president (2010 to 2015) recalled that the process to impeach Rousseff began after she refused to grant parliamentary immunity to Eduardo Cunha, at the time speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.
“There is a gentleman, Eduardo Cunha, who was speaker of Parliament, and it seems that someone traveled through Switzerland leaving $5 million in his name, but he doesn’t know who did it,” said the senator, ironically. He represents the ruling Broad Front, a leftist coalition.
Mujica added that neither the Brazilian Workers Party (leftist) nor Rousseff intervened to keep Cunha from being investigated, a stance that led to her indictment.
“And what was the Workers Party’s mistake — quote, unquote — and the president’s mistake in not covering up a case of corruption?” he asked.
During the conference, he declared that what happened Wednesday in Brazil was “the consummation of a coup d’état that had been announced for a while.”
In this connection, the senator said that the last time that Brazilian Ambassador José Serra visited Uruguay “he said bluntly that ‘this has been decided,'” and therefore “all the debate in the Senate was a giant pantomime.”
Mujica added that Rousseff’s ouster “had been decided elsewhere” and that “a show was staged in order to fool public opinion and give the appearance of a trial.”
“There was a political decision from the right to blow away this government. There was a political decision to tamper with the judicial process so as to achieve certain things that could be presented to the opinion of the [Brazilian] people and the world,” he said.
“When our comrades say ‘coup d’état,’ it is a coup d’état,” he added.
After a long impeachment process, President Dilma Rousseff was fully separated from her post in a session of the Senate. A quorum of 81 senators being present, 61 voted in favor of her ouster, 20 voted against.
On Wednesday (Aug. 31), interim President Michel Temer was invested at a Senate session.
(From Telesur)
