Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is to face trial after the Senate voted to impeach and suspend her.
Ms Rousseff is accused of illegally manipulating finances to hide a growing public deficit ahead of her re-election in 2014, which she denies.
Senators voted to suspend her by 55 votes to 22 after an all-night session that lasted more than 20 hours.
Vice-President Michel Temer will now assume the presidency while Ms Rousseff’s trial takes place.
The trial may last up to 180 days, which would mean Ms Rousseff would be suspended during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, which start on 5 August.
Ms Rousseff made a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to stop proceedings, but the move was rejected.
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Ms Rousseff, who was first sworn into office in January 2011 and started a second term in 2015, has called the steps to remove her a “coup”.
In a speech at the end of the all-night Senate session, attorney general Jose Eduardo Cardozo said that the impeachment request did not have legal basis and that the opposition wanted to remove a democratically-elected president.
He said senators were condemning an “innocent woman” and that impeachment was a “historic injustice”. Who is stand-in President Michel Temer?
Michel Temer became interim President as soon as Ms Rousseff was suspended.
- The 75-year-old law professor of Lebanese origin was Ms Rousseff’s vice-president and was a key figure in the recent upheaval
- Up until now, he’s been the kingmaker, but never the king, having helped form coalitions with every president in the past two decades
- He is president of Brazil’s largest party, the PMDB, which abandoned the coalition in March
- In recent months, his role has become even more influential; in a WhatsApp recording leaked in April, he outlined how Brazil needed a “government to save the country”.
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Until recently most Brazilians would have struggled to recognise Michel Temer if they were shown a picture of the vice-president.
But the 75-year-old law professor has played a key role in the impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.
Under Brazil’s constitution, he became acting president after the Senate voted in favour of launching an impeachment trial against Ms Rousseff, suspending her.
Mr Temer is a discreet politician who seems always to be hovering around the centre of everything important, yet – up until now – never in the spotlight.
But recently he has come out of the shadows, as a skilled politician intent on ending the Rousseff presidency and beginning a new era in Brazil.
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Mr Temer’s most notable achievement as a politician has been to help the country’s biggest political party – the PMDB – form coalitions with every president in the past two decades. He is currently party president.
He presided over Brazil’s lower house of Congress during the years of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government (1995-2002), when Brazil underwent a liberal programme of privatisations and opening-up of the economy.
And under Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2002-10, known as Lula) and Ms Rousseff, he has played a key role in helping push forward their Workers’ Party agenda of state-led investments.
But rather like his party, which has not held outright power for over two decades, Mr Temer has always been a kingmaker, but never king.
Both party and man avoid clear ideological positions, which leaves them in a comfortable position for negotiating their participation in coalitions of any political colour.
As Brazil’s political crisis worsened and Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party bore most of the brunt for the many scandals in the country, the PMDB saw an opportunity to finally seize power.
For most of last year, as Ms Rousseff’s situation deteriorated, Mr Temer kept a low profile.
Source-BBC
