Brazilian Senate votes to strip Dilma Rousseff of presidency

BRASILIA, Aug. 31 -- The Brazilian Senate voted on Wednesday to strip Dilma Rousseff of the presidency by 61 votes in favor to 20 votes against.

This means Rousseff is immediately and permanently removed from her role and Michel Temer, who assumed the interim presidency after Rousseff was suspended in May, will become president until the end of this term in 2018.

Rousseff was found guilty of seeking to hide public budget deficits through fiscal irregularities, such as delaying loan payments to public banks and ordering additional loans without congressional approval.

In a separate vote, however, Rousseff escaped from being suspended from public office for eight years. A two-thirds majority was needed to suspend her, but she escaped with 42 votes in favor, 36 against, and three abstentions.

The president of the Supreme Court, Ricardo Lewandowski, opened the historic session at 11:15 a.m. local time and gave a brief summary of the impeachment process.

Following this, the defense denied the accusations, with Senator Lindbergh Farias, from the Workers' Party, vowing that "this session will never end, it will continue in history."

"This is a farce, the process is a mere pretext, the evidence is irrelevant. There are two types of senators, those who know there was no crime of responsibility and vote against impeachment, and those who know there was no crime of responsibility and vote in favor of impeachment."

The energy of Farias was matched by Senator Ronaldo Caiado, from the Democrats, who vowed that the "Bolivarian populism" of Rousseff and her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, "had led to millions of unemployed, to civil society feeling deceived."

The removal of Rousseff puts an end to 13 years of Workers' Party rule, beginning with the election of her mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in 2003.