Brazil: Ex-president Temer admits coup against Rousseff

ANKARA

Brazil's former President Michel Temer said the impeachment of his predecessor Dilma Rousseff was in fact a ''coup''.

Speaking to TV Cultura on Monday night, Temer said he "never supported or made a commitment to the coup" and even tried to stop it.

Supporters of Rousseff have long been saying that the former president's 2016 impeachment is a ''masquerade'' and her ouster a "coup" by the political rivals of popular Workers' Party.

Temer replaced Rousseff in 2016 in a Senate-imposed mandate after his right-wing party helped impeach President Rousseff over weak claims of corruption related to irregular allocation of public funds.

Rousseff did not lose time to slam Temer after he tried to whitewash his role in the coup process.

After informing her followers on Twitter about the coup confession by former president, Roussef said: ''Temer did not say, however, that the 2016 coup was to frame Brazil in neoliberalism. And of course Temer denied having directly participated in the coup''.

Temer, who is of Lebanese descent, was the vice president of a coalition between Rousseff's Workers' Party and the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party.

Temer himself has been charged many times in connection with various corruption investigations and was jailed for five days in March.

The Workers' Party ruled from 2002 until 2016 when Rousseff, the first female president of Brazil and a long-time comrade of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, was removed from office through impeachment two years into her second term.

Both Lula and Rousseff have called what has been going on in Brazil since 2016 impeachment a coup against elected leaders.