Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was another Latin American ‘soft coup’ that allowed the US to put in Brazil a puppet president in the form of Michel Temer – an unpopular and weak leader, says human rights activist Lucy Pagoada Quesada.
As people take to the streets of Brazil in protest against the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer’s takeover of power as interim president, RT discussed the current situation with human rights activist Lucy Pagoada Quesada.
Interim President Michel Temer was vice-president under Dilma Rousseff and played a key role in her impeachment.
According to Pagoada Quesada, Temer is “a very unpopular de-facto president, because he was not elected by the people,” and is a “weak person” to be heading the country.
Many people, “particularly women,” are unhappy with the developments and taking to the streets to demand the reinstatement of President Dilma Rousseff, the activist told RT.
According to Pagoada Quesada, Rousseff’s impeachment was “a soft coup” - a new trend in Latin America, which earlier saw primarily military coups.
“It all started in 2009 in Honduras,” she said, referring to “the first ‘Congressional coup’ perpetrated by Roberto Micheletti."
“And then later in 2012 we saw a similar pattern happening in Paraguay, with the destitution of President Fernando Lugo. And now we see it in Brazil. The difference now is that we consider this to be a racist and misogynistic coup that has been perpetrated against one of the greatest leaders of Latin America and also of the world – Dilma Rousseff, the leader of the ‘Partido dos Trabalhadores’ or the Workers' Party in Brazil. And that has infuriated people all over the world,” Pagoada Quesada said.
“I am very upset of what is happening. I can’t continuously see this new pattern of destitution of constitutionally elected presidents by…the hands of the groups of corrupt individuals like Michel Temer,” she added.
Temer has been involved in several controversies: campaign financing limits violation, the Petrobras scandal, and some whistleblowers suggest he worked for US intelligence. Asked what voters think about this, Pagoada Quesada noted that Temer “is investigated for corruption.”
According to the activist, Temer “is just another puppet of the US imperialism in Latin America, just like Roberto Micheletti was at his time or Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras.”
“Many of us do not necessarily agree with the policies of the US government in Latin America - in this case supporting a puppet and new type of dictators like Michel Temer because he will become one once the people of Brazil decided that they will stay in the streets demanding the return of their legal constitutional president. We know what comes after: the repressions, the killings, the disappearance of people,” she said.
She said that such scenarios have earlier been implemented in “many countries in Latin America.”
“This is a pattern. We’ve seen this also in Venezuela with the attempt of destabilization of the Nicolas Maduro government. We’ve seen it in Argentina. We’ve seen it with [Ecuadorian] President Rafael Correa,” Pagoada Quesada said.
In her words, the US constantly attempts to “attack progressive governments in Latin America” and uses different approaches in pursuing its policies.
“They are trying different ways to overthrow them because we know that the old ways of the military dictatorships… people don’t want those types of regimes. We don’t want the militarization and the abuse by the military. But they are doing it a different way. And they do have the military ready to start attacking the people, to start repressing once the people decide they will stay on the streets just demanding the constitutional order to be returned,” she said.
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