Brazilian senate strips Dilma Rousseff of presidency

Dilma Rousseff maintains her innocence. Buda Mendes/Getty Images

BRASÍLIA // Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff was stripped of the presidency on Wednesday in a senate impeachment vote that ended 13 years of leftist rule.

Her vice president turned bitter political enemy, Michel Temer, was due to be sworn in as the country’s new head of state later in the day.

The veteran centre-right politician had been the country’s acting president since Rousseff’s initial suspension in May.

“They decided to interrupt the mandate of a president who had committed no crime. They have convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup,” said Rousseff after the vote.

The 68-year-old was convicted by 61 of the 81 senators of illegally manipulating the national budget. The vote, passing the needed two-thirds majority, meant she was immediately removed from office.

However, in a surprise twist, a separate vote to bar Rousseff from holding any public office for eight years failed to pass, meaning she could in theory re-enter political life.

Cheers – and cries of disappointment – erupted in the chamber as the verdict flashed up on the electronic voting screen.

Pro-impeachment senators burst into a rendering of the national anthem, some waving Brazilian flags, while allies of Rousseff stood stony faced.

“I will not associate my name to this infamy,” read a sign held up by one senator.

About 50 leftist demonstrators gathered outside the presidential palace to show their support.

“We are protesting against the coup and fighting for democracy,” said 61-year-old farmer Orlando Ribeiro.

In the centre of the capital, extra security and the closing of avenues near the senate caused massive traffic jams. Police said they were preparing for large protests in the coming hours.

Rousseff, from the leftist Workers’ Party, is accused of taking illegal state loans to patch budget holes in 2014, masking the country’s problems as it slid into its deepest recession in decades.

She told the senate during a marathon 14-hour session on Monday that she is innocent and that abuse of the impeachment process put Brazil’s democracy, restored in 1985 after a two-decades-long military dictatorship, at risk.

Recalling how she was tortured and jailed in the 1970s for belonging to a leftist guerrilla group, Rousseff urged senators to “vote against impeachment, vote for democracy ... Do not accept a coup”.

However, huge anti-Rousseff street demonstrations over the last year have reflected nationwide anger at her management of a country suffering double-digit unemployment and inflation.

The once mighty Workers’ Party, meanwhile, has struggled to stage more than small rallies.

Mr Temer, 75, who is known more as a back room wheeler-dealer than a street politician, will be president until the next scheduled elections in late 2018.

* Agence France-Presse