Impeached Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff openly criticized her former vice president and successor Michel Temer’s government as being too white and male.
Rousseff claims Brazil’s new cabinet does not represent the diversity of the country, according to a Sunday BBC News report.
“Black people and women are fundamental if you truly want to construct an inclusive country,” Rousseff told the press Friday. The embattled president, who is living in political limbo since her impeachment, added, “I think the government is clearly showing that it is going to be neo-liberal in the economy and extremely conservative on the social and cultural side.”
In Rousseff’s government, seven out of 31 cabinet ministers were women — Brazil is 51 percent female.
“We tried to seek women but for reasons that we don’t need to bring up here, we discussed it and it was not possible,” Temer’s Chief of Staff Eliseu Padilha said in response to the criticism. The interim government was formed hastily because of Rousseff’s impeachment, which is partly to blame for the lack of diversity, according to Padilha.
Rousseff was impeached by the Brazilian Senate last Thursday and called a “former Marxist guerrilla who was once arrested with a gun in her handbag,” according to The Guardian. Interim President Temer is the descendant of Lebanese Maronite Catholic immigrants and “a lawyer and a licensed constitutional law professor at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo,” according to Fox News Latino.
The former president was impeached for tampering with the country’s public finances in 2014, making them look better than they actually were ahead of a tight reelection campaign. Rousseff will continue to live in the luxurious Planalto Palace over the course of her impeachment trial.
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