Brazil's Rousseff suspended to face impeachment trial

Brasilia: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was suspended Thursday to face impeachment, ceding power to her vice president-turned-enemy Michel Temer in a political earthquake ending 13 years of leftist rule over Latin America's biggest nation.

Temer quickly pivoted toward a more business-friendly government, naming a cabinet chosen to calm the markets after the paralyzing impeachment battle and steer the country out of its worst recession in decades.

He tapped a respected former central bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, for the key post of finance minister, an adviser said, confirming a full cabinet overhaul that opponents immediately condemned as a throw-back to an era when Brazilian politics was the exclusive domain of white males.

Defiant to the end, Brazil's first female president denounced a "coup" aimed at driving her from power, and urged her supporters to mobilize as she braces for an impeachment trial that is set to drag on for months.

"What is at stake is respect for the ballot box, the sovereign will of the Brazilian people and the constitution," she said in what could be her final address from the presidential palace, dressed in white and flanked by her soon-to-be-sacked ministers.

Rousseff then exited the building to shake hands and wave to a red-clad crowd gathered outside the modernist capital's seat of power.

There, she gave another fiery speech as her predecessor and mentor, the once wildly popular Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, stood by her side, repeatedly wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief in the tropical heat.

She was then whisked away in a convoy of black vehicles.

Hours earlier, a nearly 22-hour debate in the Senate closed with an overwhelming 55-22 vote against Rousseff, as pro-impeachment senators burst into applause and posed for selfies and congratulatory group photos.

Only a simple majority of the 81-member Senate had been required to suspend Rousseff for six months pending judgment on charges that she broke budget accounting laws.

A two-thirds majority vote will be needed at the end of the impeachment trial to force Rousseff, 68, from office altogether.

Temer, from the center-right PMDB party, said his priority is to reboot the economy and end the paralysis gripping Congress during the battle over Rousseff.

A onetime Marxist guerrilla tortured under the country's military dictatorship in the 1970s, Rousseff was expected to hole up in her official residence, where she will continue to live with her mother during the impeachment trial. She will retain her salary and bodyguards.

The leader of the Workers' Party in the Senate, Humberto Costa, said his side would now work to convince senators to support Rousseff in the trial and turn the tide in her favor.

- Battered by multiple crises -

Due to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in less than three months, Brazil is struggling to stem economic disarray and handle the fallout from a corruption scandal reaching deep into the political and business elite.

The multiple crises have wreaked havoc on the Workers' Party, whose transformative social programs have lifted tens of millions of people from poverty since 2003, but which has been portrayed as increasingly incapable of governing.

Senate President Renan Calheiros, who oversaw the proceedings, told reporters that impeachment would be "traumatic."

And divisions were plain to see outside Congress, where police erected a giant metal fence to keep apart small rival groups of demonstrators during the impeachment debate.

Riot police pepper sprayed a group of Rousseff supporters late Wednesday and pro- and anti-impeachment protesters also scuffled briefly in Rio.

Even though the impeachment vote came in the middle of the night, residents in central Sao Paulo -- Brazil's financial center and an opposition stronghold -- set off fire crackers, banged pots and yelled "Dilma out!" from their windows.

- 'Stain' or 'new day?' -

Jose Eduardo Cardozo, Rousseff's attorney general, delivered a passionate closing statement before the impeachment vote, telling senators that they were "condemning an honest, innocent woman" and leaving "a stain on our history."

But opposition leader Aecio Neves said "Brazil can now start to turn a new page."

In what may go down as one of the many ironies of the chaotic impeachment process, Neves, the candidate Rousseff narrowly defeated in the 2014 election, was named shortly after as the latest target in the sprawling probe into a multi-billion-dollar corruption scheme centered on state oil company Petrobras.

Even some of those opposing Rousseff doubt that a change of power will resolve the country's underlying problems of corruption and mismanagement.

Pro-impeachment protester Sulineide Rodrigues said that even if she wanted Rousseff out, she had few hopes for Temer improving things.

"We don't think Temer will be any better," said Rodrigues, 59.

"But you know what we'll do? We'll keep coming back and keep having impeachments until there's someone there who listens to us Brazilians."