Brasilia: Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff said today that she is "outraged" by a vote in Congress to authorise impeachment proceedings against her and vowed to keep fighting.
In an emotional first public response to the vote on yesterday, Rousseff said she would not give up now that her case has gone from the lower house to the Senate for a possible trial.
"I have strength, spirit and courage. I will not be beaten, I will not be paralysed. I will continue to fight and I will fight as I did all my life," Rousseff said in the remarks carried live on television.
The lower house voted overwhelmingly to send Rousseff to the Senate for trial on allegations that she illegally manipulated government accounts during her 2014 reelection to mask the scale of budget holes.
But Rousseff said that deputies in the house had failed to provide any evidence that she'd committed an impeachable crime, calling the process instead a "coup d'etat."
The vote was "violence in Brazil against truth, against democracy and against the democratic rule of law," she said.
The Senate is due to vote in May on whether to open a trial at which point Rousseff would be suspended. The trial could take months and if senators then voted by a two thirds majority she would be deposed.
Her vice president, Michel Temer, would take over. Rousseff branded Temer a "traitor" in her remarks, saying he had conspired against her.
