Brazil: Dilma Rousseff impeached from office

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep.

Brazilian senators voted Wednesday to dismiss the country’s first female president who was accused of crimes of responsibility.

Dilma Rousseff lost her post after the 61-20 vote in favor of her removal despite her efforts and those of her defenders who argued endlessly for her to remain president.

A second vote of 42-36 allows her to retain her right of executing public functions and to be elected, according to the O Globo newspaper.

A defiant Rousseff addressed supporters during a press conference shortly after the vote. "Our role now is to become a powerful opposition to the government of [Michel] Temer," she said.

The result effectively ends 13 years of rule by the Workers Party (PT), credited for raising millions of Brazilians out of poverty since 2003, when former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva was in office.

The biggest nation and economy of South America will now be led by Temer, who assumed the position on an interim basis after Rousseff was suspended in May in order to prepare for the trial.

He will serve as the country’s leader until the end of the current presidential term in 2018 with the challenge of winning the trust of Brazilians who have low approval ratings of Temer, and he will have to try to right the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Rousseff is the country’s second head of state to be removed from office by impeachment, after Fernando Collor de Mello in 1991 was dismissed under corruption charges.

Rousseff’s case is different, however, from that of 25 years ago. She is accused of issuing credit decrees without congressional authorization, shuffling funds to shore up budget deficits and delaying public payments in 2014 and 2015 to pay for government-sponsored social programs – accounting measures she and her supporters say have been utilized by previous presidents.

She maintains her innocence and has called the campaign against her a "coup".

“The accusations are pretexts, only pretexts to break down through charges of a crime of responsibility a legitimate government elected with the direct participation of 110 million Brazilians,” Rousseff said Monday during her own defense presentation.