RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Hours after lawmakers voted to impeach Dilma Rousseff last week, Brazil’s first female president blasted her enemies for making her “the victim of a great injustice” and promised a bruising fight to hold onto her mandate.
“I fought my whole life and I’m going to keep fighting,” said Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla, looking both exhausted and haggard during her last press conference.
Since then Rousseff has all but disappeared, the latest surprise in one of the most bizarre and divisive political dramas to grip Latin America’s largest nation in years.
While the acting president gets comfortable in Rousseff’s former office, introducing new Cabinet members and announcing rapid-fire changes to the region’s biggest economy, Rousseff has been holed up in the sprawling Alvorada presidential palace where she’s permitted to stay even as she’s suspended and awaiting a Senate trial that will determine her fate in the coming months.
She has not made any public appearances or held any events to rally supporters. She’s even cut back on the morning bike rides that had become a daily ritual, and her once-robust Twitter feed has slowed to a trickle, repeating the same arguments against impeachment that she’s been making for months.