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The Senate voted 61 to 20 to convict Ms. Rousseff on charges of manipulating the federal budget in an effort to conceal the nation’s mounting economic problems.
But the final removal of Ms. Rousseff, who was suspended in May to face trial,
was much more than a judgment of guilt on any charge. It was a verdict
on her leadership and the slipping fortunes of Latin America’s largest
country.
The impeachment puts a definitive end to 13 years of governing by the leftist Workers’ Party,
an era during which Brazil’s economy boomed, lifting millions into the
middle class and raising the country’s profile on the global stage.
But sweeping corruption scandals,
the worst economic crisis in decades and the government’s tone-deaf
responses to the souring national mood opened Ms. Rousseff to withering
scorn, leaving her with little support to fend off a power grab by her political rivals.
“She
lacked it all,” said Mentor Muniz Neto, a writer from São Paulo who
described Ms. Rousseff’s final ouster as a “death foretold,” asserting
that she lacked charisma, competence and humility. “We deserved better.”
To her many critics, the impeachment was a fitting fall for an arrogant leader at the helm of a political movement that had lost its way. But Ms. Rousseff and her supporters call her ouster a coup that undermines Brazil’s young democracy.
Moreover, her impeachment may not restore public confidence in Brazil’s leaders, or diminish the corruption that pervades the country’s politics. To the contrary, many Brazilians note, it transfers power from one scandal-plagued party to another.
Michel
Temer, 75, the interim president who served as Ms. Rousseff’s vice
president before breaking with her this year, is now expected to remain
in office until the end of the current term in 2018.
But Mr. Temer’s centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party,
which anchored the Workers’ Party’s governing coalition for more than a
decade, was also deeply enmeshed in the colossal graft schemes staining
Brazil’s political system in recent years. It arguably benefited as
much as the Workers’ Party from huge bribes and illicit campaign
financing.
Since becoming interim president in May, Mr. Temer has had approval ratings nearly as dismal as Ms. Rousseff’s. Shifting the government to the right, he named a cabinet without any female or Afro-Brazilian ministers, outraging many in a country where nearly 51 percent of people define themselves as black or mixed race, according to the 2010 census.
Several of the men named by Mr. Temer have already resigned under the cloud of scandal, including his anticorruption minister
and his planning minister, amid claims that they were trying to stymie
investigations into the bribery engulfing the national oil company,
Petrobras.