Rousseff: I will never resign and this impeachment is attempted coup

In an incisive speech Tuesday (Mar. 22), President Dilma Rousseff accused an ongoing coup, as she called it, in Brazil. She repeated that she will not resign and declared she had not committed any crime provided for in the Constitution and in laws.

When mentioning the impeachment proceedings being discussed in the Chamber of Deputies, Rousseff said that there is no "crime of responsibility" and that due to the lack of evidence, ousting a president becomes "a crime against democracy."

Citing the military dictatorship as a process of which she was a "victim", the president declared that she will fight "for not being a victim again in a moment of full democracy."

"I cannot mince my words in this case. What is going on is a coup against democracy. I will never resign. Those who ask for my resignation lack conviction about the impeachment proceedings because, above all, they try to hide exactly this coup against democracy, and I will not condone it. For that reason, I will not resign under any circumstance," she declared.

After hearing lawyers opposed to her impeachment, the president said she would never have guessed she would experience a setback to a past moment when Brizola led movements for the country's legality. She said she was addressing the audience "confident to have acted since the beginning" of her term of office to doggedly and tenaciously fight against "the corruption that has always afflicted Brazil."

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta