Brazil’s sacked ex-president Dilma Rousseff said on Friday she will abandon the presidential residence next week and continue the fight against her successor Michel Temer from her adopted hometown, Porto Alegre.
The 68-year-old leftist leader must leave the Alvorada official residence in Brasilia within a month after senators voted Wednesday to fire her over charges she illegally manipulated the national budget.
In her first media briefing since then, she repeated her claim that Brazil’s new President Temer had led a “coup” in having her impeached.
Rousseff’s lawyers have already lodged an appeal in the high court against the impeachment, which she says was a plot by Temer, her former vice-president turned enemy.
“I will not stay in Brasilia. I will go to Porto Alegre...early next week,” Rousseff told a briefing of foreign reporters.
“Democracy was on trial alongside me. Unfortunately, we lost,” she said of the impeachment process. “I hope that we can rebuild it and make sure that this never happens again.”
Rousseff was born in the southern central city of Belo Horizonte but built her political career further south in Porto Alegre. Her daughter and grandchildren still live there and she keeps an apartment in the city.
Brazilian newspaper Folha said Rousseff started moving books and clothes to Porto Alegre weeks ago and will leave the Alvorada accompanied by her pet dachshund, Fafa.