Spotlight: Brazilian president faces interrogation marathon

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was interrogated by senators for over 12 hours on Monday, till midnight, as she reiterated her denouncement of an ongoing coup in Brazil on the fourth day of the Senate session.

The president, who was suspended from her office in May, started with a fierce speech which lasted almost one hour, accusing the opposition of trying to depose her without proof that she committed a crime.

Rousseff warned against a dangerous precedent of impeaching a president without proper legal requirements, saying she is not defending her office, but democracy.

Rousseff was accused of provoking the crisis which Brazil is currently facing, and answered with irony that the irregularities of which she is accused, alone, could never provoke an economic turmoil of such great proportions.

She also said that the opposition is trying to turn regular fiscal decisions into crime.

"You are criminalizing fiscal policy," she told senators. "It was not only Brazil which went through a crisis. Since 2009 the world has been facing its greatest crisis."

The sidelined Brazilian president also took a moment to criticize the measures that Vice President Michel Temer has been taking since he took over as interim president in May.

Rousseff noted that the fiscal target he set for this year at a deficit of 170 billion reals (51 billion U.S.dollars) is grossly overestimated.

The real threat, she said, is Temer's idea of freezing the expenses on basic sanitation, housing, public healthcare and education for "unbelievable" 20 years.

"That means, for another 20 years, preventing children from having access to schools, stopping people from having better healthcare, getting families farther from the dream of owning a house for 20 years," she said.

"Freezing federal expenses for 20 years means that people will not be allowed to be born, to study, one cannot improve the school system or the healthcare system," said Rousseff, who was Brazil's first woman president and reelected to a second term in 2014

The president reiterated her defense of a plebiscite. In case she is found innocent of the accusations, she said she would be willing to call a plebiscite to consult the public on whether presidential elections, scheduled for 2018, should be anticipated.

Starting on Tuesday, Brazilian senators will decide whether Rousseff will be impeached or not. The impeachment requires a two-thirds vote, or 54 of the 81 senators. Endi