
BRASILIA – Brazil’s deposed president Dilma Rousseff left the Brazilian capital on Tuesday to return to her adopted hometown of Porto Alegre.
A few dozen supporters were waiting outside as Rousseff abandoned Alvorada palace, the presidential residence, which she continued to occupy during the Senate trial that ended last Wednesday with her removal from office.
The now-former head of state ordered her driver to stop, got out of the vehicle and greeted some of the well-wishers, thanking them for their “solidarity” before heading to the airport.
Waving the red banners of Rousseff’s Workers Party, the group chanted “No to the coup” and “Temer out,” referring to new President Michel Temer.
Rousseff’s erstwhile vice president was sworn-in last week after senators voted 61-20 to oust the country’s first woman president less than halfway through her second term.
Rousseff, who denied having committed the budgetary maneuvers that formed the basis of the charges against her, called the impeachment process a “parliamentary coup.”
The deposed president arrived at Brasilia’s international airport on Tuesday just hours after Temer disembarked on his return from the G-20 summit in China, the new chief executive’s first turn on the international stage.
Rousseff, 68, was born in Belo Horizonte but lived for nearly four decades in Porto Alegre, where she settled after spending three years in prison for her role in resistance to the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.
She moved to Brasilia in late 2002 to serve as energy minister in the Workers Party government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who two years later named Rousseff as Cabinet chief.
Lula anointed Rousseff as his successor and she won the 2010 presidential contest, going on to secure a second term in 2014.
Rousseff, who says she is returning to Porto Alegre so she can be close to her daughter and grandchildren, has ruled out any involvement in electoral politics in the near future.