WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – On Thursday, the upper house of the Brazilian parliament voted 55-22 to open impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff after she was accused of concealing the country’s budget deficit ahead of the 2014 re-election.
"It is a scandal. It is so clear that what is happening in Brazil is a state coup against democracy," Mendonca, who is also a professor in the international relations department at the University of Rio De Janeiro, said on Friday.
Rousseff was suspended for 180 days and her office was assumed by Vice President Michel Temer.
However, Temer had strong ties to overseas financial interests, Mendonca said.
"Under President Rousseff, Brazilian law kept domestic petroleum prices low and prevented major international corporations from trying to gain control of the vast deep sea oil reserves discovered within Brazilian territorial waters deep under the Atlantic Ocean.”
Those foreign interests want increased access to those reserves, Mendonca insisted.
"We are now seeing the establishment of a neo-liberal government much more friendly to foreign investment and offering a dramatic turn in foreign policy."
"We would like to see a stronger position from the Obama administration."
Mendonca said the erosion of Rousseff’s position had started with attacks by powerful international speculators that rapidly drove the previously healthy Brazilian economy into crisis.
"Apparently there was a speculative attack from foreign interests that created instability and then the media controlled by big business interests bombarded the country with wild accusations of corruption by the president and her government."
This crisis gave a misleading view of Rousseff’s economic record, Mendonca explained.
"The economy in Brazil was going well under President Rousseff. We had full employment and a lot of investment in health education and other social areas,” she argued. “Then suddenly Brazil became the target of speculators [and] interest rates had to be doubled to keep capital in the country.”
Yet the political establishment that had opposed the personally honest Rousseff had well-known records of corruption while she did not, Mendonca asserted.
"If the same criteria used against her were used against state governors, 16 of them would be impeached,” she claimed. “They all used the same mechanism to cover a budget shortfall.”
Mendonca expressed skepticism that Interim President Temer could retain power for long.
"Temer is incredibly unpopular. He's already naming a new cabinet, which is highly legally questionable. He's moving a right-wing agenda to cut education and healthcare and abolish the culture ministry."
Temer has also been implicated in a corruption scandal involving state-owned oil company Petrobras.
