Impeachment vote: Rousseff won’t resign

Expressing outrage over the congressional vote to open impeachment proceedings against her, President Dilma Rousseff said she will not resign and vowed to keep fighting the forces arrayed against her.

The defiant comments came at a Monday press conference at the presidential palace, which was Ms Rousseff’s first public appearance since the Chamber of Deputies voted 367-137 the previous night to send the impeachment proceedings to the Senate for a possible trial of Brazil’s first female President.

The proceedings against Ms Rousseff are based on accusations that her administration used illegal accounting tricks that allowed government spending to shore up flagging support before elections.

Ms Rousseff said previous Presidents used such fiscal maneuvers without repercussions and called the accusations against her an act of “violence against democracy”. She said the claims against her are really a flimsy cover for Brazil’s traditional ruling elite to grab power back from her left-leaning Workers’ Party, which has governed for 13 years.

“I’m not going to get cowed; I won’t let myself be paralysed by this,” Ms Rousseff said, adding: “I have the energy, strength and courage to confront this injustice.”

Ms Rousseff repeated the words “indignant”, ‘’injustice” and “wronged” dozens of times, and she reiterated her argument that she hasn’t done anything illegal and is thus the victim of a “coup” orchestrated by political foes.

“Today more than anything I feel wronged — wronged because this process doesn’t have any legal basis,” she said.

The President took aim at her nemesis, Lower House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who has been the driving force behind the impeachment move. While pushing for her removal, Mr Cunha has been charged with taking $5 million in bribes in a sprawling corruption scheme at Brazil’s state-run Petrobras oil giant.

The Petrobras investigation has implicated many of the country’s leading political players, including vice-president Michel Temer, who would fill in for Ms Rousseff if the Senate votes to put her on trial.