Vice President Michel Temer will serve as acting president as Rousseff is tried, and will continue if Rousseff is permanently removed from office.
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Sources reveal that senators voted to suspend her by 55 votes to 22 after an all-night session that lasted more than 20 hours.
She was not accused of personal corruption, but was standing charged with manipulating government accounts to disguise the size of Brazil’s fiscal deficit to allow her to boost public spending during her 2014 re-election campaign.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is now facing a formal impeachment trial and immediate suspension.
Sen. Romero Juca says the 55-22 vote to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff suggests it would be very hard for her to win her mandate back during the impeachment trial.
But the conviction that Temer simply can’t fail is belied by the extraordinary challenges this 75-year-old constitutional lawyer faces: near double-digit inflation, rising unemployment, the worst recession in over a century and a multi-billion-dollar scandal that is lapping at his heels.
In a further illustration of Temer’s market-friendly credentials, a broad range of Brazilian assets fell sharply Monday following the revelation that Rousseff might be able to avoid impeachment.
Brazil has been plunged into renewed political turnoil after the Senate voted to impeach president Dilma Rousseff.
Brazilian Attorney General Eduardo Cardozo said during his defense of Rousseff that Brazil would become the “biggest banana republic on the planet” if the impeachment vote passes.
Senate President Renan Calheiros, who oversaw the proceedings, told reporters that impeachment would be “traumatic”. Justice Teori Zavascki ruled the government’s argument that impeachment was flawed because it was started out of revenge by the former speaker of the lower house was “legally implausible”.
Ms Rousseff denounced the impeachment drive as a coup attempt, saying Mr Temer conspired against her to return the country to the right.
The Senate’s march toward a historic vote on impeaching Rousseff began Wednesday morning.
Temer, who is seen by many younger Brazilians as a symbol of old-style, back-room politics, is almost as unpopular as Rousseff was.
“Plainly said, this is the worst crisis in our history, with its combination of economic calamity, discredited politics and the violation of the lowest ethical standards”, Boris Fausto, a Brazilian political scientist and historian, commented to reporters earlier this month.
Small but intense clashes broke out between police and the president’s supporters, with officers using pepper spray and protesters throwing firecrackers.
She was expected to be officially notified of the vote’s result at 10:00 am (1300 GMT) Thursday and was planning to address the nation around the same time.
“I think social movements will take to the streets”, she added.
Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and called her impeachment a “coup”.
“As of today in this historical meeting for the PMDB, the party withdraws from the base of the government of President Dilma Rousseff and no one in the country is authorized to hold any federal position in name of the PMDB”, Juca said to loud cheers and applause after the decision was approved.
Rousseff’s popularity was crushed by a long-running probe into a vast kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras, at a time when she was chairwoman of the company.
Brazil is set to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro three months from now, but has been in the grip of an economic crisis and is struggling to deal with a national outcry over a corruption scandal incriminating its political and business leaders.
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“Temer may have a honeymoon, but let’s not forget this was a shotgun wedding”, said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
