Temer sworn in as Brazil President

This comes hours before Temer was scheduled to fly to China for the G-20 summit to make his international debut as the official leader of South America’s largest nation. A stalwart of the center-right PMDB party, Temer has vowed to steer Brazil away from 13 years of Workers’ Party rule in hopes that a more market-friendly track will resolve the country’s worst recession in decades.

“We are not going to China to stroll around,” he said in his first televised Cabinet meeting, after his swearing-in, adding that the trip would centre on attracting investment and showing the world that there is legal and political stability in Brazil.

Temer added that creating jobs would be a priority for his administration and that he would press for quick congressional approval for an overhaul to Brazil’s troubled pension system, simplification of its complicated labour laws and a cap on public spending.

One of eight children born to Lebanese immigrants, Temer studied constitutional law and was elected to the Congress in 1987. Known as a consummate behind-the-scenes deal maker, Temer is now in the spotlight to bring calm and prosperity to a nation upended by an impeachment he helped set in motion.

Rousseff, 68, was convicted by 61 of the 81 senators of illegally manipulating the national budget. 

The vote, which exceeded the needed two-thirds majority, meant the veteran leftist leader was immediately removed from office.

Cheers – and cries of disappointment – erupted in the blue-carpeted, circular Senate chamber as the impeachment verdict flashed up on the electronic voting screen.

Pro-impeachment senators sang the national anthem, some waving Brazilian flags, while leftist allies of Rousseff stood stony faced. “I will not associate my name with this infamy,” read a sign held up by one senator.“Coup plotters!” others chanted. 

In a surprise twist, a separate vote to bar Rousseff from holding any public office for eight years failed to pass, meaning she could in theory re-enter political life. Speaking at the Alvorada presidential palace on the outskirts of the capital Brasilia, Rousseff, from the leftist Workers’ Party, condemned her forced exit.

“They decided to interrupt the mandate of a president who had committed no crime. They have convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup,” she said, defiantly vowing that she’d “be back.” 

Rousseff is accused of taking illegal state loans to patch budget holes in 2014, masking the country’s 

problems as it slid into today’s economic disarray. She told the Senate during a marathon 14-hour session on Monday that she is innocent and that abuse of the impeachment process put Brazil’s democracy, restored in 1985 after a two-decades-long military dictatorship, at risk.

Recalling how she was tortured and imprisoned in the 1970s for belonging to a leftist guerrilla group, Rousseff urged senators to “vote against impeachment, vote for democracy.” 

Brazil’s ex-president Dilma Rousseff on Thursday filed a Supreme Court challenge, asking for the overturning of a Senate impeachment vote that removed her from office. The appeal, filed by her lawyer Jose Eduardo Cardozo, demands “the immediate suspension of the effects of the Senate decision.” 

The Senate voted on Wednesday to convict Rousseff on charges of having illegally manipulated government accounts, stripping her of her office and replacing her with her bitter enemy and former vice-president Michel Temer. Cardozo’s appeal asks for “a new trial” during which Temer, who was sworn in as president till the end of 2018,would be downgraded to interim president again. Rousseff is in the Alvorada presidential palace in Brasilia. She is expected to leave shortly for her personal apartment in the southern city of Porto Alegre.