Temer also said that the Carwash Operation, an investigation into alleged corruption within the government-run oil company Petrobras, “should be protected”. However, it’s highly unlike that members of Mercosur, which depend greatly on Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, would risk alienating the incoming president.
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In a last-ditch effort to save her presidency, Rousseff appealed to the supreme court on Wednesday to block the senate, arguing that Cunha had abused his position of power to seek “revenge”.
Rousseff, who was a Marxist guerilla during the country’s dictatorship in 1964-1985, said that “she never imagined that it would be necessary to fight once again against a coup in this country”.
Vice President Michel Temer, who was made acting president Thursday, unveiled a new cabinet and is expected to announce spending cuts and pro-business measures to revert an economic slowdown.
The events spelled an end, at least for now, of 13 years of government control by the leftist Workers Party, which, under former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, ushered in a boom at the end of the last decade that saw millions lifted from poverty.
Considering the legislators have already voted 55 to 22 in favor of the trial. the odds don’t seem to be in her favor.
“[The lack of women] has a symbolic dimension, but it also says a lot about what kind of public policies could come from such a non-diverse group, “wrote Manoela Miklos, a columnist who focuses on women’s issues in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo”.
Rousseff, who will be suspended from office for the duration of the trial in the upper house, a maximum of 180 days, could be permanently removed if convicted by a two-thirds majority of using accounting trickery in 2014, when she won re-election, and 2015 to disguise the size of the budget deficit.
But analysts say Mr Temer’s popularity ratings are as bad as Ms Rousseff’s and he faces many challenges.
Last night, Senators voted to impeach president Dilma Rousseff. Six women, including one black, were included in the 39 members of Rousseff’s Cabinet when she began her second term previous year.
Before taking office as the vice president in January 2011, Temer had been a political office holder. She will have security guards, health care, and the right to travel, as well as staff for her personal office and a salary, the senate head said.
Opponents of the new president, whose ascent has left the country deeply divided, condemned the new cabinet as a throw-back to an era when Brazilian politics was the exclusive domain of white males.
Senate President Renan Calheiros said at one point: “I’m asking for everybody’s patience because we need to see this through to the end”.
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Senators made their cases in 15- minute blocks, alternately describing Ms Rousseff as the cause of Brazil’s humiliating economic decline or defending her as victim of a coup in a deeply corrupt political system.
