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        Brazil's Rousseff Denounces Critics Calling for Her Impeachment

   by VOA News

   Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff lashed out Wednesday at critics
   trying to impeach her, saying they were trying to carry out a "coup."

   Rousseff said in Brasilia she would continue to advance social programs
   in the face of an ongoing recession, rebuffing opposition lawmakers who
   contend that she illegally borrowed money to boost public spending to
   mask the severity of the country's economic downturn from voters during
   her 2014 re-election campaign.

   Rousseff has a tenuous hold on power, made more difficult Tuesday when
   her main coalition partner, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party,
   the country's largest political group, left her government. The split
   with Rousseff's leftist Workers' Party greatly reduced her chances of
   mustering the one-third of the votes she needs in Brazil's lower house
   of Congress to defeat a first impeachment vote, which could be held by
   mid-April.

   With the political crisis at home, Rousseff canceled a planned trip to
   Washington for a nuclear safety summit on Thursday and Friday.

   Rousseff's critics have taken to the streets to protest the country's
   worst recession in decades and a corruption scandal at the state-owned
   Petrobras oil company that has reached Rousseff's inner circle of
   associates.

   One opposition leader, Senator Romero Juca of the Democratic Movement
   Party, said, "We're going to try to change the country. The economic
   and social crisis is very serious."

   Brazil was not long ago heralded as an emerging world economic power,
   alongside China, Russia and India. But Brazil's economy contracted 3.8
   percent last year and is on track for its worst two-year economic skid
   in more than a century.

   At the same time, South America's largest country is fighting the
   outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus as it prepares to host the
   Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in August.
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   ling-impeachment/3261609.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/brazil-rousseff-denounces-critics-calling-impeachment/3261609.html