Dilma Rousseff Suggests that Fear of the BRICS is Behind Her Impeachment

In an interview Thursday with the Russian government daily Rossiskaya Gazeta, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff suggested, in terms not previously used, that Brazil’s membership in the BRICS is the reason why she has been pushed out of office.

Although the full interview will not be published until tomorrow, both TASS and Sputnik publish excerpts from it. “The creation of the BRICS was an event of unprecedented significance in world affairs,” TASS quoted her. “The emergence of the BRICS and the G-20 group was a high point from the standpoint of multilateral processes and of building a multipolar world.” Dilma underscored that the creation of the BRICS “has very much frightened a number of states, and we know this.”

She said, “I am sure that those who want to seize power in Brazil have no understanding of the world order. I believe that in their perception of the world, they are stalled back in the 1980s or even the 1970s.” Explaining her own belief that the BRICS members are experiencing economic problems stemming from a “Western-induced crisis,” she confidently stated that “we will overcome that crisis, to get even stronger than we were in the past. Our alliance rests upon the idea of the strategic nature of these relations. It is an inter-continental union.” And, she added, “to think that this bloc of countries would collapse is tantamount to making a strategic and unforgivable geopolitical error.”

In this context, note reports from RT and Brazilian media, that a handful of Senators are rethinking their votes on Dilma’s impeachment, in light of revelations in tapes that ministers plotted her removal, and given the fact that interim President Michel Temer’s government is rife with corruption. Moreover, Temer’s June 1 decision to restrict Dilma’s travel on military aircraft to only three locations, forcing her to use commercial airlines or to travel by land, is too much for some legislators to swallow. Temer’s move is not only a grave security threat, as both Dilma and her lawyer Jose Eduardo Cardozo have charged, but also contradicts a Senate agreement, which enumerated her rights following her May 12 removal. Cardozo has submitted a petition to the head of the Supreme Court and the head of the Senate, charging that the restrictions “constrain” Dilma’s defense and limit her ability to travel around the country to meet with her supporters, at the very least.