AFP, Brazil :
Brazil’s suspended president Dilma Rousseff will take the stand to defend herself at her impeachment trial in the Senate, an aide said Thursday, setting up a dramatic showdown with her accusers.
Rousseff, who is accused of fiddling the national budget to make Brazil’s tanking economy look better, will be allotted time to testify on August 29, said the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Ricardo Lewandowski, who will preside over the trial.
A spokesman for the suspended leftist leader confirmed she would defend herself in person.
“She’ll be there,” he told AFP.
Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman president, accuses her opponents of trumping up the charges against her to remove her in a “coup.”
But she looks almost certain to lose the final vote in the Senate, ending 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers’ Party.
The trial is due to open on Thursday, August 25, four days after the Olympic Games end in Rio de Janeiro.
Senate president Renan Calheiros said the vote would likely take place on August 30, the day after Rousseff testifies.
The trial will start with procedural matters, followed by witness testimony, according to the schedule set down by Lewandowski and Calheiros.
The prosecution plans to call two witnesses and the defense four. They will answer questions from Lewandowski, from senators and from lawyers for both sides.
Brazil’s suspended president Dilma Rousseff will take the stand to defend herself at her impeachment trial in the Senate, an aide said Thursday, setting up a dramatic showdown with her accusers.
Rousseff, who is accused of fiddling the national budget to make Brazil’s tanking economy look better, will be allotted time to testify on August 29, said the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Ricardo Lewandowski, who will preside over the trial.
A spokesman for the suspended leftist leader confirmed she would defend herself in person.
“She’ll be there,” he told AFP.
Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman president, accuses her opponents of trumping up the charges against her to remove her in a “coup.”
But she looks almost certain to lose the final vote in the Senate, ending 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers’ Party.
The trial is due to open on Thursday, August 25, four days after the Olympic Games end in Rio de Janeiro.
Senate president Renan Calheiros said the vote would likely take place on August 30, the day after Rousseff testifies.
The trial will start with procedural matters, followed by witness testimony, according to the schedule set down by Lewandowski and Calheiros.
The prosecution plans to call two witnesses and the defense four. They will answer questions from Lewandowski, from senators and from lawyers for both sides.
