Brazil’s Senate met Wednesday to vote on stripping Dilma Rousseff of the presidency in a traumatic impeachment trial set to end 13 years of leftist rule over Latin America’s biggest country.
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Brazilian stocks are advancing after Brazilian president Dilma Roussef was permanently removed from office today, after an impeachment trial for mishandling Brazil’s budget and extending its economic crisis, Reuters reports. She has been found guilty of illegally using money from state banks to bankroll public spending.
Pleading her innocence during a marathon 14-hour session on Monday, she said that abuse of the impeachment process put at risk Brazil’s democracy, restored in 1985 after a two-decades-long military dictatorship.
In a second vote about 30 minutes later, Rousseff won a minor victory as a measure to ban her from public office for eight years failed.
A general election is scheduled for 2018.
But the final Senate vote, the climax of a yearlong drama swirling around the president, was not as close as many forecasters had thought: 61 senators voted in favor of impeachment, and only 20 voted against it.
Venezuela and Brazil on Wednesday withdrew their respective ambassadors after Caracas froze ties with its southern neighbor in response to president Dilma Rousseff’s removal from office.
Adding its voice to the criticisms, the leftist government of El Salvador said in a statement that Rousseff’s removal “represented a serious threat for Latin America’s democracy, peace, justice, development and integration”.
Temer’s ability to tackle those problems remains in question, as there are signs of resistance to his proposals in congress.
“The most perverse outcome of the actions of the president is that 12 million are unemployed, 5 million since she was re-elected”, said Sen.
Many believe Temer could also still be embroiled in the Petrobras case, which has led to investigations of politicians from his party as well as Rousseff’s for alleged receipt of bribes and kickbacks.
However, huge anti-Rousseff street demonstrations over the a year ago have reflected nationwide anger at her management of a country suffering double-digit unemployment and inflation.
Pro-impeachment senators burst into a rendering of the national anthem, some waving Brazilian flags, while allies of Rousseff stood stony faced. Rousseff has said she was never participated in armed conflict.
According to the former leader, the government of President Michel Temer would attack the rights “to work, a fair retirement, housing, land, health, education and culture, the rights of young people, blacks, indigenous, LGBT people, and the right to protest without being repressed”.
He appeared tone-deaf with his first move in May: appointing an entirely white, male Cabinet to oversee a nation of 200 million people where more than 50 percent identify as black or mixed-race.
Pledging to appeal against her impeachment, she told her supporters: “Right now, I will not say goodbye to you”. “It’s you who is breaking the constitution”.
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Rousseff was the first ever woman leader of the Workers’ Party, and during her first term as President fared well on opinion polls in terms of her policies which favoured the poor in Brazil, such as lowering taxes on food and the cost of electricity. He was Rousseff’s running mate during her successful presidential run in 2010, then again in 2014.
