Rio Olympics 2016: Dilma Rousseff, Brazilian President, To Miss Flame-Lighting Ceremony

Greece's Olympic committee emitted a statement saying they had received a notice that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a scheduled appearance at this month's flame-lighting ceremony in Greece for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this summer. The statement did not include further details on the reasons of Rousseff’s absence.

The ceremony will take place on April 21, in Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics in southern Greece where the flame is lighted in a fake ancient ritual.

Rousseff has been battling impeachment over allegations that she manipulated budgets to overspend in her 2014 re-election campaign. At the time, impeachment request alleged that Rousseff’s government violated campaign laws before and after last year’s election. However, it did not name Rousseff as a conspirator in the Lava Jato, a graft scandal that has plagued Brazilian politics for the past year, plunging the country into a political crisis outmatched only by its economic one.

Rousseff rejected both the allegations against her and the impeachment proposal. “My present and my past vouch for my honesty and my unquestionable commitment to the law,” Ms. Rousseff said in a televised address (WSJ translation). “We can’t permit indefensible interests to unsettle our country’s democracy.”

Professions of innocence like Rousseff’s have become ubiquitous in the upper-echelons of Brazilian politics, but the scandal-plagued President does have one thing going for her: zero evidence has been presented that directly implicates her in wrongdoing, or suggests that she personally benefited from bribes.

Rousseff’s ruling party, the PT, vowed to fight the impeachment proceedings from even starting, but they were unsuccessful. In fact, the impeachment announcement came amidst an ongoing and wide-reaching bribery scandal related to government contracting of Brazilian state oil company Petrobras. That graft scandal implicated dozens of top legislators, including Cunha himself, and put many politicos behind bars.