Dilma Rousseff has been officially removed as Brazil’s President a week before the Paralympic Games get underway in Rio de Janeiro after she suffered a crushing impeachment vote defeat.
The Brazilian Senate voted 61 to 20 in favor of impeaching Rousseff, with interim President Michel Temer installed to complete the rest of her term, due to end on January 1, 2019.
Fifty-four of the 81 Senators needed to vote in favour of the impeachment motion for it to be passed.
Rousseff was charged with spending without Congressional approval as well as manipulating government accounts to mask the extent of the budget deficit during her 2014 re-election campaign.
She continues to deny the allegations.
Temer, who was booed at the Opening Ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on August 5, is expected to be sworn in later today.
This comes despite the fact that, as Rousseff’s vice-president, he is also accused of the same allegations.
The move to end Rousseff’s term in office could have an impact on the Rio 2016 Paralympics, which begin with the Opening Ceremony on September 7.
Protests have been common throughout Brazil during the ongoing impeachment trial, which has rocked Brazil to the core and has sparked a fierce backlash from Rousseff’s supporters.
It has embroiled Brazil in a deep political crisis, which threatened to dwarf Rio’s staging of the Olympic Games.
Sporadic demonstrations took place during the Games but never overshadowed the sporting action which took place.
Rousseff was suspended in May but the trial was delayed in order to avoid a clash with the Olympics.
She declined an invitation to attend the Opening Ceremony of the Games, the first to ever be held in South America, as she refused to play “second-fiddle” to Temer.
The two have been at loggerheads during the protracted impeachment process, with Rousseff accusing Temer of orchestrating a coup to get her removed from Presidential office.
“From the day after I was elected, several measures were taken to destabilize my government,” she said in her defense in the Senate on Monday (August 29). “And you have been systematically making accusations against me. I fought against dictatorship. I have the mark of torture on my body. At almost 70 years of age, it’s not going to be now, after becoming a mother and grandmother, that I will abandon the principles that have always guided me.”
By Liam Morgan
Republished with permission from insidethegames.biz