Brazil on Wednesday impeached its first female president, Dilma Rousseff, after a ten-month political crisis that has brought to an end 13 years of Leftist rule in the Latin American power, The Telegraph reports. Sixty one senators voted to remove Ms Rousseff, of the centre-left Workers’ Party, with just 20 opposing the motion at the end of six days of hearings.
A group of lawmakers burst into a rendition of the national anthem on the floor of the Senate amid cheers of “Brazil!” after the vote came through shortly after 1.30pm.
Ms Rousseff, who has repeatedly insisted she was the victim of a “parliamentary coup” by corrupt opponents, was replaced by Michel Temer, her vice president from the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party. He has acted as interim leader since her suspension in May and will will serve out the rest of her term until 2018.
However, the fallen president’s supporters managed to salvage some of her political career by successfully calling for a second vote on whether or not she should be banned from politics for eight years.
That penalty was rejected, meaning that Ms Rousseff can still participate in elections despite being removed from the presidency.
Meanwhile, Mr Temer has already been ruled ineligible to run because of a conviction under campaign financing laws.
Ms Rousseff was not in the upper house to hear the result, which found her guilty of manipulating government accounts to hide a deficit before her re-election in 2014, which she won with 54.5 million votes. She had testified in her own defence on Monday with an uncompromising speech that denounced Mr Temer as a “usurper”.
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