Supporters of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff protested her impeachment Wednesday night by setting fires, damaging property and clashing with police in the country’s largest city, Sao Paulo.
Lawmakers voted 61-20 Wednesday to remove Rousseff from office, finding her guilty of breaking budgetary laws in an impeachment trial.
Michel Temer, Rousseff’s former vice president who has been the interim president since her suspension in May, will serve out the remainder of her term. Temer, a leader of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, was sworn in as President on Wednesday afternoon.
Police lined the streets to curb the often violent demonstrations, which saw property vandalized and police vehicles damaged. Police fired tear gas at some supporters of the former leader in an attempt to quell the protests.
Temer, 75, inherits a tattered economy along with the keys to the presidential palace in Brasilia, the capital.
In an attempt to bring calm to the streets and reassure ordinary Brazilians, Temer said: “This is a moment of hope, to rebuild trust in Brazil. Uncertainty has come to an end. It’s time to unify the country.”
The new President met with his Cabinet and promised to tackle unemployment.
“I am not saying it is an easy task, since we have almost 12 million people unemployed in this country,” he said, according to a CNN translation. “It’s a scary number, and there is nothing less dignified than unemployment.”
A general election is scheduled for 2018.
Wednesday’s vote marked the culmination of a contentious impeachment process that has dragged on for months. The political crisis came as Brazil hosted the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this month, while the country has also been trying to pull itself out of recession.
Brazil’s first female president is out of a job but hasn’t been barred from the ballot if she wants to run again — a motion to bar her from holding any public office for the next eight years failed.
Rousseff, 68, a former Marxist guerrilla, said this week that she had committed no crime and was proud she’d been “faithful to my commitment to the nation.”
Sen. Lindbergh Farias of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party made an impassioned plea against her impeachment.
“This is a farce. This is a pretext. This is absolutely irrelevant. There are two types of senators, the one that know there was no crime of responsibility and vote against the impeachment and those that know there was no crime of responsibility and vote in favor,” he said, shouting from the Senate floor.
Sen. Ronaldo Caiado of the Democrats argued for Rousseff’s ouster, saying that lawmakers weren’t the ones behind the impeachment process.
“It began because 90% of the population has said loudly, no more (Workers’ Party),” he said.
The heir to former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rousseff was re-elected by a narrow margin in 2014, but a recession and a cross-party corruption scandal put an end to any political goodwill she might have earned, eventually leading to her ouster.
A statement from a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had “taken note” of the impeachment process and Temer’s swearing-in.
“The secretary-general extends his best wishes to President Temer as he begins his tenure,” the statement said. “He trusts that under President Temer’s leadership, Brazil and the United Nations will continue their traditional close partnership.”