Brazil’s President Rousseff ousted from office by Senate

Brasilia, Aug 31 (AP) Brazil’s Senate today voted toremove President Dilma Rousseff from office, the culminationof a yearlong fight that paralysed Latin America’s largestnation and exposed deep rifts among its people on everythingfrom race relations to social spending. While Rousseff’s ouster was widely expected, the decisionwas a key chapter in a colossal political struggle that is farfrom over. Rousseff was Brazil’s first female president, with astoried career that includes a stint as a Marxist guerrillajailed and tortured in the 1970s during the country’sdictatorship. She was accused of breaking fiscal laws in hermanagement of the federal budget. "The Senate has found that the president of the federalrepublic of Brazil, Dilma Vana Rousseff, committed crimes inbreaking fiscal laws," said Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski,who presided over the trial. Opposition lawmakers, who made clear early on the onlysolution was getting her out of office, argued that themaneuvers masked yawning deficits from high spending andultimately exacerbated the recession in a nation that had longenjoyed darling status among emerging economies. Nonsense, Rousseff countered time and again, proclaimingher innocence up to the end. Previous presidents used similaraccounting techniques, she noted, saying the push to removeher was a bloodless coup d’état by elites fuming over thepopulist polices of her Workers’ Party the last 13 years. The opposition needed 54 of the 81 senators to vote infavor for her to be removed. They got many more, winning in alandslide of sorts, 61-20. "Today is the day that 61 men, many of them charged andcorrupt, threw 54 million Brazilian votes in the garbage,"Rousseff tweeted minutes after the decision. Rousseff won re-election in 2014, garnering more than 54million votes. In a second vote about 30 minutes later, Rousseff won aminor victory as a measure to ban her from public office foreight years failed. The 42-36 vote fell short of the 54 votesneeded for passage. In the background of the entire fight was a wide-ranginginvestigation into billions of dollars in kickbacks at stateoil company Petrobras. The two-year probe has led to the jailing of dozens of topbusinessmen and politicians from across the politicalspectrum, and threatens many of the same lawmakers who votedto remove Rousseff. Rousseff argued that many opponents just wanted her out ofthe way so they could save their own skins by tampering withthe investigation, which Rousseff had refused to do. MORE (AP)ABH