BRASILIA – President Dilma Rousseff says she will not
resign in Brazil’s worst political crisis in two decades, calling an opposition
move to impeach her a “coup d’etat” against democratic rule because
she had committed no crime.

A corruption scandal that has reached her inner circle
threatened to implicate more people after the country’s largest engineering
firm Odebrecht decided to cooperate with prosecutors investigating a huge
political bribery scheme.

“I will never resign under any circumstances,”
the embattled president said in a speech to legal experts. “I have
committed no crime that would warrant shortening my term.”

Rousseff called on Brazil’s Supreme Court to remain
impartial in the crisis that has threatened to topple her government as
opponents seek her impeachment in Congress.

Opposition parties have launched impeachment proceedings
against Rousseff for allegedly manipulating government accounts to allow her
government to spend more in the run-up to her 2014 re-election. The president
could be suspended as soon as May if her supporters do not block impeachment in
the lower house.

Recent corruption allegations and huge anti-government
street protests have raised the odds of Rousseff being impeached, ending 13 years
of leftist Workers’ Party rule.

The Petrobras graft investigation has implicated dozens
of politicians in Rousseff’s coalition and led to the jailing of scores of
executives in top engineering firms such as Odebrecht. Following police raids
on company offices on Tuesday, Odebrecht said in a statement its executives
targeted in the corruption probe will seek plea bargain deals with prosecutors.

With her popularity at rock bottom due to the
snowballing scandal and the worst recession in a generation, the political
survival of Brazil’s first female president depends largely on her main
coalition partner, the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB).

Growing numbers of lawmakers in the fractious PMDB want
the party to leave her government, a decision that could be taken at a March 29
executive committee meeting. The party may hold the deciding votes on
impeachment, which would put Vice President Michel Temer, leader of the PMDB,
in the presidential seat.

Party officials have denied Brazilian media reports that
Temer is already preparing a post-Rousseff government and has begun talks with
opposition leaders to secure their backing.

The head of the Senate, PMDB Senator Renan Calheiros,
who appeared to be wavering in his support of Rousseff, echoed her position on
impeachment after meeting with her predecessor and mentor, former President
Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, who is back in Brasilia working to shore up her
crumbling coalition.

– Reuters