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.
A nearly 22-hour debate in the
Senate closed with an overwhelming 55-22 vote against Brazil's first female
president. Pro-impeachment senators broke into applause.
Only a simple majority of the
81-member Senate had been required to suspend Rousseff for six months pending
judgement on charges that she broke budget accounting laws. A trial could now
take months, with a two-thirds majority vote eventually needed to force
Rousseff, 68, from office altogether.
Within hours, Temer, from the
centre-right PMDB party, was to take over as interim president, drawing the
curtain on more than a decade of dominance by Rousseff's leftist Workers'
Party.
He was preparing to announce a
new government shortly and said his priority is to address Brazil's worst
recession in decades and end the paralysis gripping Congress during the battle
over Rousseff.