BRAZILIAN President Dilma Rousseff vowed to “defend democracy” on Tuesday after her opposition-party deputy accidentally leaked his inauguration speech drafted for the event of her removal by impeachment.

Vice-President Michel Temer sent a 13-minute recording of his planned speech to fellow congress members ahead of the lower house’s vote on whether to impeach Ms Rousseff.

Mr Temer claimed he had not meant to send the speech via an instant messaging application.

Ms Rousseff said she was shocked by the recording, which she alleged revealed treason against herself and against democracy.

“The mask of the conspirators has fallen,” she said. “They now are conspiring openly, in the light of day, to destabilise a legitimately elected president.”

“The coup is not just against me,” Ms Roussef continued. “It is especially against the project that I represent. This is the most obvious feature of this scam.”

Mr Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) was the largest group in the 16-party coalition government led by Ms Rousseff’s Workers Party, but split off two weeks ago ahead of the looming impeachment vote.

On Monday, a 65-member committee gave the green light to the impeachment motion against Ms Rousseff for allegedly hiding spending increases ahead of the 2014 election.

But as vice-president, Mr Temer could be held complicit if the allegations are proven.

His PMDB colleague and Chamber of Deputies speaker Eduardo Cunha, who has led calls for Ms Rousseff’s impeachment, are under investigation for taking millions in bribes in the “Car Wash” scandal at state oil firm Petrobras.

“I don’t really know which one is the chief and which is his second-in-charge,” Ms Rousseff said of Mr Temer and Mr Cunha.

Union of South American Nations (Unasur) secretary-general Ernesto Samper also attacked the impeachment process, saying it posed a “serious concern to the legal certainty of Brazil and the region.”

The Brazilian congress “must accept that if a president is removed from office for alleged policy failures the knock-on effects in the region could lead to the criminalisation of governments who have not committed crimes,” the statement read.