Brazil’s first female president was impeached Wednesday in a 61-20 Senate vote and replaced by Michel Temer who assumed the position on an interim basis after Rousseff was suspended in May.
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“They think that they beat us, but they are wrong”, said Rousseff on Wednesday in her first remarks after being removed from office.
“I will not associate my name with this infamy”, read a sign held up by one senator.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Rousseff’s successor in a statement, saying he “trusts that, under President Temer’s leadership, Brazil and the United Nations will continue their traditional close partnership”. “They have convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup”, she said, defiantly vowing that she d “be back”.
After Temer’s swearing in on Wednesday, hundreds of youths took to the streets of Sao Paulo, smashing shop windows and hurling rocks at riot police, who responded with tear gas.
So far he’s struggled in the almost four months he’s served as interim president following Rousseff’s May impeachment, which suspended her from office while a final trial was prepared.
The two-year probe has led to the jailing of dozens of senior businessmen and politicians from across the political spectrum, and threatens many of those who voted to remove Ms Rousseff.
After almost a year of political turmoil, Brazil can now redouble its efforts to put the economy back on track, a challenge that includes spending caps and pension cuts, President Michel Temer told his cabinet following a swearing-in ceremony in Congress.
It was the second impeachment in the 31 years since the country emerged from military dictatorship and one that will pave the way for a fundamental shift in economic policy after 13 years of her party’s leftist rule.
Rousseff was accused of bypassing Congress to alter budgets by decree and taking too long to reimburse state-controlled banks for funds used to pay for government programs, a delay that her opponents say amounted to taking out illegal loans from those institutions.
The statement argues that the political process against her violates democracy and Brazil’s constitution.
Temer has vowed to boost an economy that has shrunk for six consecutive quarters and implement austerity measures to plug a record budget deficit, which cost Brazil its investment-grade credit rating a year ago.
The 75-year-old, known more as a backroom wheeler-dealer than street politician, took over in an interim role after Rousseff’s initial suspension in May. She was reelected in 2014.
Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment was widely expected ever since Congress suspended her from office in May. Temer pledges to pull Brazil together and rescue the country from its economic slump. It remains uncertain whether he will have voters’ support to push through the painful austerity reforms he promises.
“Never will we condone these practices, which recall the darkest hours of our America”, he said on Twitter.
Dilma Rousseff’s removal as president of Brazil for fiscal irregularities had a clear political motive but was not a coup, as Rousseff has stated, according to an expert.
She won re-election in 2014, gaining more than 54 million votes.
On the Senate floor, emotions crackled in the run-up to the vote, then overflowed as senators made final speeches on what both sides of the debate agreed was history in the making.
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“Today’s legal farce removes me from the position I was elected to by the people”, Rousseff said in her personal blog after the impeachment.
