Brazil’s president to be tried by senate

BRAZIL’S senate voted yesterday to put leftist President Dilma Rousseff on trial in a historic decision brought on by a deep recession and a corruption scandal that will now confront her successor, Vice-President Michel Temer.

With Rousseff to be suspended during the senate trial for allegedly breaking budget rules, the centrist Temer will take the helm of a country that again finds itself mired in political and economic volatility after a recent decade of prosperity.

The 55-22 vote ends more than 13 years of rule by the leftwing Workers Party, which rose from Brazil’s labour movement and helped pull millions of people out of poverty before seeing many of its leaders tainted by corruption investigations.

Fireworks rang out in cities across Brazil after the vote at the end of a 20-hour session in the senate.

Police clashed briefly with pro-Rousseff demonstrators in Brasilia on Wednesday, exchanging volleys of teargas and rocks.

Rousseff, 68, an economist and former Marxist guerilla elected Brazil’s first woman president, is unlikely to be acquitted in a trial that could last as long as six months.

A two-thirds majority is needed in the senate to convict her, but the scale of her defeat yesterday showed that the opposition already has the support it needs.

“Impeachment is a tragedy for the country . . . it is a bitter though necessary medicine,” opposition Senator Jose Serra, tipped to become foreign minister under Temer, said during the debate.

“But having the Rousseff government continue would be a bigger tragedy. Brazil’s situation would be unbearable.”

Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and called her impeachment a coup.

Temer, 75, now faces the challenge of restoring economic growth and calm at a time when Brazilians, increasingly polarised, are questioning whether their institutions can deliver on his promise of stability.

In addition to a towering budget deficit, equal to more than 10% of its annual economic output, Brazil is suffering from rising unemployment, plummeting investment and a projected economic contraction of more than 3% this year.

Economist Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca said: “Only major reforms can keep Brazil from moving from crisis to crisis.”

Rousseff’s government made a last-ditch effort to annul her impeachment, but it was rejected by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.