The Senate’s decision is likely to be more political than legal. Rousseff has been elected President by 54 million votes; yet the alleged fiscal irregularities, along with the economic problems and the political paralysis served as reason enough for the Senate to impeach her. Dilma Rousseff will have to step aside for at least six months while she is tried in the upper house. Her judges will be senators, many of whom face accusations for more serious crimes.
She faces charges for allegedly manipulating government accounts ahead of the previous election.
Brazil is going through its deepest recession in decades, which did legally irrelevant as it may be, politically helped build a case against Rousseff whose popularity has plunged.
Meanwhile, the country has been dealing with a massive corruption scandal at the state-run oil firm Petrobras, to which Rousseff herself is not involved, but numerous politicians from all political parties are, including the former president Luiz Ináçio Lula da Silva.
Rousseff was President in a coalition government of a fractious parliament. Brazil will be hosting the Olympic Games this summer and is also under the spotlight for the Zika virus health crisis. As problems have been mounting, her impeachment was a political move played by her opponents, some of which decided to vote for it in a literally 5 minutes session.
In the lower house vote, some less elegant scenes went down, when the results were announced with cheering and singing. This time, even opponents acknowledged the president is one of the least corrupt politicians in Brazil. Some senators claimed to be sad over the decision which however they thought was unavoidable due to the economic and political turmoil.
“All the people here are broken hearted. We don’t want this, but it is unavoidable. Brazil has come to a stop since last year. We all recognise that [Dilma] has done a good job during her life for the democracy of Brazil” claimed Marcelo Crivella, senator for the Brazilian Republican party who in fact voted for the impeachment.
“This is the saddest day in the history of our young democracy” said Vanessa Grazziotin, a senator from the Communist Party of Brazil. “This isn’t a valid Constitutional process; it is a coup that goes against the opinion of the majority in the 2014 election”.
About 70% of Brazilians support holding new elections but that has been ruled out by Vice-President Michel Temer, who is the big winner out of this situation. He has spent the past few weeks interviewing candidates for the centre-right administration he will is now expected to form. According to news sources, his first Cabinet will be entirely male and white.