Rousseff to testify at Brazil impeachment hearing on Monday

Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, is scheduled to testify in her own defence on Monday morning after she was suspended from the presidency in May.

This comes just a day or two before the upper house is expected to vote for her permanent ejection from office for alleged fiscal irregularities.

Rousseff is said to be grilled by opponents from the centre-right coalition of interim president, Michel Temer.

Impeachment supporters believe a final vote – which is expected to be passed by the necessary two-thirds majority of the 81 senators on Tuesday or Wednesday – will provide catharsis and allow Temer’s administration to plot a new course for the nation.

Opponents say it is the culmination of a constitutional coup to end 13 years of Workers party rule, runs roughshod over the democratic choice of the 54 million voters who re-elected Rousseff in 2014, reverses progress towards gender and ethnic equality and is part of a plot to curtail the “Lava Jato” (Car Wash) corruption investigation that has implicated dozens of senior politicians.

Rousseff is being impeached for window-dressing government accounts ahead of the last election by issuing decrees on spending without congressional approval and waiting several months to reimburse a state-owned bank for a low-interest financing scheme for family farmers for months.

Senators must decide if this is a “crime of responsibility” that merits removal from office. Rousseff’s lawyers claim, the argument against her is more political than legal. Similar fiscal irregularities reportedly went unpunished in previous national and regional administrations, but they are a pretext to remove a leader who has struggled to assert her authority.