Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff branded her vice president a traitor yesterday and said he was a conspirator in a “coup” using impeachment proceedings to bring down a popularly elected government.
“If there were any doubts about my denunciation that a coup is underway, there can’t be now. The coup plotters have a leader and a deputy leader,” she said in a blistering attack in the capital Brasilia.
Referring to the leak Monday of a recording in which her Vice President, Michel Temer, practices the speech he would make if Rousseff is impeached, the president said: “The mask of the conspirators has fallen.”
“We are living in strange and worrying times, times of a coup and pretending and treachery,” she said. “Yesterday they used the pretense of a leak to give the order for the conspiracy.”
“Yesterday it became clear that there are two leaders of the coup who work together in a premeditated way,” she said, without naming names, although the context clearly referred to Temer and the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha.
“They are coup plotters, without respect for democracy,” she said.
“This is the biggest judicial and political fraud in our history,” she said. “They are trying to bring down without legal justification a president elected with 54mn votes.”
Rousseff faces impeachment proceedings over allegations that she illegally manipulated government accounts to cover up the depth of budget woes.
The lower house of Congress was to vote on the impeachment at the end of this week. If an impeachment trial then starts in the senate, Temer would take over as president and if she is impeached, he would remain in power.
Opponents of Rousseff deny her frequent claims of a coup plot.
Rousseff is hugely unpopular as Brazil sinks into its worst recession in decades. The political system has also been paralysed by a huge corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras.
A congressional committee on Monday voted to recommend Rousseff’s ouster. After winning Monday’s skirmish in the committee, opponents of Rousseff declared they were on a roll.
“It was a victory for the Brazilian people,” said opposition deputy Jovair Arantes, predicting that the result would carry with “strong” pro-impeachment momentum into the full chamber’s vote.
But pro-government deputy Silvio Costa said he was also confident.  
“The opposition is very arrogant” after Monday’s committee victory, he said.
There were worries that passions will spill over as the lower house vote approaches. Large crowds of both Rousseff supporters and opponents were expected in the capital Brasilia and will be separated by a metal barrier.
More than 4,000 police and firefighters will be on duty, G1 news site reported, and security has been stepped up at Congress, with heavy restrictions on access to the building.
Meanwhile police yesterday arrested former senator Gim Argello, federal prosecutors said, as part of a two-year corruption investigation that has given momentum to impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.
The probe centred on state-run oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA  has uncovered systemic corruption at multiple companies and at the highest levels of government since the Workers’ Party took power in 2003. Rousseff herself is not being investigated.
The 28th round of police raids in the so-called “Operation Car Wash” probe was based on evidence that Argello, from the centrist PTB party, took bribes to ensure executives at major infrastructure companies would not be summoned by an investigative congressional committee in 2014, prosecutors said.
“These are alarming facts because they strongly suggest that a congressional investigative committee, which has an important role in our democracy, was used by a senator for corruption instead of fighting it,” prosecutor Athayde Ribeiro Costa said in the statement.
Prosecutors said construction firms UTC Engenharia SA and OAS SA paid Argello 5mn ($1.44mn) and 350,000 reais ($100,519), respectively. Executives at those firms were arrested at earlier stages of the probe.