Brazilian senate to impeach Dilma Rouseff

Brazil’s senate voted to impeach president Dilma Rousseff after a months-long fight that laid raw the country’s fury over corruption and economic decay, hurling Latin America’s largest country into political turmoil just months before it hosts the Olympics.

Ms Rousseff’s enraged backers called the move a coup d’etat and threatened wide-scale protests and strikes.

Her foes, meanwhile, insisted that she had broken the law, and that the country’s deep political, social and economic woes could only be tackled without her.

The 55-22 vote means Ms Rousseff’s ally-turned-enemy, vice-president Michel Temer, will take over as acting president while she is suspended.

The senate has 180 days to conduct a trial and decide whether Ms Rousseff should be permanently removed from office.

“Did anyone think that we would get to 2018 with a recovery under this government? Impossible,” said Jose Serra, the opposition Social Democratic Party’s failed presidential candidate in the 2010 race that brought Ms Rousseff into power.

“The impeachment is just the start of the reconstruction.”

Ms Rousseff, 68, was impeached for her alleged mishandling of the federal budget. Critics said she used accounting tricks to hide ballooning deficits and bolster an embattled government.

Brazil’s first female president, who was tortured under the country’s dictatorship, has frequently blasted the impeachment push as modern-day coup, arguing she had not been charged with a crime and previous presidents did similar.

She has also suggested that sexism in the male-dominated Congress played a role in the impeachment.

Ms Rousseff’s impeachment ends 13 years of rule by the Workers’ Party, which is credited with lifting millions out of abject poverty but vilified for being at the wheel when billions were siphoned from the state oil company Petrobras.

Analysts also say Ms Rousseff got into trouble with a prickly manner and a perceived reticence to work with legislators that may have alienated allies.

Mr Temer, a 75-year-old career politician, has promised to cut spending and privatise many sectors controlled by the state.

For weeks, he has been quietly putting together a new Cabinet in expectation of taking over, angering Rousseff supporters. The lower house voted 367-137 last month in favor of impeachment.

The marathon debate in the Senate began Wednesday morning and took 20 hours as dozens of lawmakers rose to give their opinions.

Humberto Costa, the Workers’ Party leader in the Senate, brandished a photo of Ms Rousseff from her days as a young Marxist guerrilla during the country’s 1964-1985 dictatorship at the military proceedings against her.

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