Brazil's senators voted overwhelmingly on Thursday, May 12, to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial, an impeachment push driven by mounting frustration in the country. (Dom Phillips,Nick Miroff,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) 
 
 Brazil's senators voted overwhelmingly on Thursday, May 12, to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial, an impeachment push driven by mounting frustration in the country. (Dom Phillips,Nick Miroff,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) 
 
 Brazil’s once-lauded model of leftist government appeared to come to an abrupt end Thursday, when lawmakers suspended President Dilma Rousseff in an extraordinary repudiation of her administration and the Workers’ Party that has ruled the country for 13 years. 
 
 Vice President Michel Temer quickly assumed control of Latin America’s largest country, signaling that he will take Brazil in a more free-market-friendly direction in an attempt to shore up its sagging economy and win over a skeptical public. A member of the centrist PMDB party, Temer introduced a conservative-leaning, all-male cabinet Thursday that swings Brazil toward the right. 
 
 He called on Brazilians to trust in the country’s values and in the recovery of its economy, which is suffering its worst crisis in 80 years. “It is urgent to pacify our nation and unify Brazil,” he said. 
 
 Rousseff’s removal sent shock waves throughout Latin America, where Brazil was once viewed as an emerging economic power and the model for a new form of leftist rule, matching support for big business with muscular social-welfare programs to alleviate poverty and nurture a new middle class. That project has come crashing down, and Rousseff paid the price Thursday. She faces impeachment proceedings that could last six months. An overwhelming vote against her in Brazil’s Senate indicated that she had little chance of being acquitted. 
 
 Rousseff, 68, is accused of improperly using billions of dollars in loans from government banks to fill budget shortfalls and pay for social programs. But the impeachment vote became a broader referendum on her leadership amid a painful recession and corruption scandals that have swept up much of the country’s political elite. 
 
 Supporters of suspended President Dilma Rousseff hold up messages outside her office in Brasilia on May 12, 2016, denouncing the Senate vote against her as a “coup.” (Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 The country’s first female president vowed to fight the charges against her — raising the possibility of further political instability as Brazil stumbles toward the Aug. 5 opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 Rousseff’s supporters called for strikes and demonstrations blocking roadways, but the sympathizers who gathered at the presidential palace Thursday appeared to number only in the hundreds. 
 
 [The charges against Dilma Rousseff, explained] 
 
 A former leftist militant who was jailed and beaten as a young woman during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Rousseff called her suspension “an injustice more painful” than torture, blasting the impeachment vote as “fraudulent” and a “coup.” 
 
 Her defiant remarks came after a 20-hour debate that ended with 55 of Brazil’s 81 senators voting to put her on trial, far more than the simple majority needed. 
 
 Her accusers say Rousseff systematically obscured the precarious state of the country’s finances from lawmakers and the public to boost her reelection prospects in 2014 and conceal her mismanagement. The impeachment allegations cover only her present term, however. 
 
 Just hours after the vote, she insisted again that her predecessors had used the same bookkeeping tactics. “It was not a crime in their time. It’s not a crime in mine,” she said in a brief televised speech. 
 
 1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Brazil sets impeachment vote on President Dilma Rousseff View Photos Brazilian lawmakers weigh whether to oust the president as supporters and opponents take to the streets in protest. Caption Brazilians lawmakers weigh whether to oust the president as supporters and opponents took to the streets in protest. April 17, 2016 In Brasilia, deputies fight during a session to discuss the admissibility of the impeachment request of President Dilma Rousseff. Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 But her accusers say her accounting methods involved far greater sums. 
 
 [Brazil goes from female president to leader with millennial wife] 
 
 Temer takes office with a weak government and mandate; recent polls showed that only 2 percent of Brazilians wanted him to be president. 
 
 All of the 21 ministers Temer announced Thursday are men, a fact that will fan accusations of gender bias in the push to oust Rousseff, especially from backers of the Workers’ Party, which championed greater diversity in government. 
 
 In his first comments after the impeachment vote, Temer said he would focus on reviving the economy and would maintain popular social programs. His new finance minister is a respected former banker, Henrique Meirelles, who was central bank chief under Rousseff’s predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. 
 
 Temer also sought to give assurances that the Olympic Games will go off well, saying that billions of people would be watching and that Brazil could show itself at its best. “We will never get another opportunity like this,” he said. 
 
 According to Marcos Troyjo, a former Brazilian diplomat who is a professor of international affairs at Columbia University in New York, Temer’s arrival is likely to bring a shift in trade policy that will make Brazil more attractive for U.S. investors. Temer named Sen. José Serra, who ran against Rousseff in the 2010 presidential election and voted Thursday to remove her, as foreign minister. 
 
 “Serra will bring Brazil closer to the West, not only in ideological terms, but practical terms, in terms of market access,” Troyjo said. Rousseff had cordial, although not close, relations with the Obama administration. 
 
 [Why the world needs Brazil to bounce back] 
 
 Rousseff’s departure was part of a broader political shift in Latin America, Troyjo said, away from the center-left populist model that dominated the region for most of the past decade. 
 
 “It puts Brazil in line with a trend being felt around Latin America,” he said. 
 
 Temer assumes the presidency on an interim basis, but he would serve out the rest of Rous­seff’s term if she were found guilty. In Brazil’s multiparty system, it is not uncommon for a presidential candidate to run with a vice-presidential candidate from a different party. 
 
 [How Brazil’s Workers’ Party lost the workers] 
 
 A career politician, Temer’s reputation is that of a skilled negotiator and smooth behind-the-scenes operator. But he is hardly colorless. 
 
 Temer, 75, is a legal scholar and sometime poet who is famous for dapper suits, slicked-back silver hair and young wife Marcela, who will turn 33 on Monday. 
 
 Temer is the author of a book of sensual verses inspired by his spouse, a former beauty pageant contestant who became his third wife in 2003. 
 
 Temer is one of the many Brazilian politicians who have been implicated in the “Car Wash” bribery scandal at state oil company Petrobras, but he has not been charged. On Thursday, he said would protect the long-running judicial investigation from any possible attempts to weaken it. Rousseff is not under suspicion of graft in relation to that scandal. 
 
 Those who know Temer, the son of Lebanese Christian immigrants, say he has the political skills to quickly win over a skeptical public. 
 
 “I have never seen someone as prepared for this emotionally as Michel Temer,” said Jacob Goldberg, one of Brazil’s most celebrated psychoanalysts. Goldberg said he has had a close relationship with Temer for decades, calling him “a cordial man, a man of dialogue” and “not a man of confrontation.” 
 
 He declined to confirm whether Temer had been his patient, citing confidentiality. 
 
 The early-morning vote on Rousseff was the equivalent of impeachment in most democracies. But legal experts say that, in the Brazilian context, a politician is considered “impeached” only if found guilty. 
 
 Rousseff’s removal is a once-unthinkable revolt against her Workers’ Party, co-founded by her mentor Lula, who left office in 2010 with an 87 percent approval rating and an economy growing at an annual rate of 7.5 percent. Lula was among the aides who embraced Rousseff in an emotional scene Thursday morning as she left her office for perhaps the last time. 
 
 Lula, too, is under investigation on allegations of corruption and obstruction of justice but says he is innocent. 
 
 Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Ghosts of Brazil’s past haunt presidential impeachment crisis 
 
 How Brazil, the darling of the developing world, came undone 
 
 How Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party lost the workers 
 
 Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world ||||| Photo 
 
 BRASÍLIA — After months of tirades, secret maneuvering and legal appeals, Brazil’s Senate began debating on Wednesday whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, suspend her from office and put her on trial. 
 
 The debate, followed by a vote as late as Thursday morning, is a watershed in the power struggle consuming Brazil, a country that experienced a rare stretch of stability over the last two decades as it strengthened its economy and achieved greater prominence on the world stage. 
 
 Now, those gains are unraveling. Brazil is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, huge corruption cases across the political spectrum and a bitter feud among its scandal-plagued leaders — just months before the world heads to Rio de Janeiro for the Summer Olympics. 
 
 Ms. Rousseff, who is accused of manipulating the budget to hide the depths of Brazil’s economic woes and bolster her own re-election prospects, is widely expected to be ousted by the Senate, ending 13 years of political dominance by her leftist Workers’ Party. 
 
 If she is suspended and put on trial, she would become the second of Brazil’s four elected presidents to be removed from office since democracy was re-established in the mid-1980s after a long dictatorship. 
 
 She already lost a vote last month in the lower house of Congress, which advanced the impeachment proceedings to the Senate. Powerful lawmakers fending off their own graft charges led the effort against her. 
 
 “Plainly said, this is the worst crisis in our history, with its combination of economic calamity, discredited politics and the violation of the lowest ethical standards,” Boris Fausto, a Brazilian historian, told reporters this month while summing up the country’s grim mood. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Even many who want Ms. Rousseff ousted are bracing for what comes next. Vice President Michel Temer, the former ally who is poised to take over the government if Ms. Rousseff is suspended, is an unpopular figure as well, with one recent poll finding that only 2 percent of Brazilians would vote for him. 
 
 He also faces his own legal problems. An electoral court ordered him this month to pay a fine for violating campaign financing limits. The ruling could make him ineligible to run for elected office for eight years, creating an unusual situation in which a politician barred from campaigning ends up running the country. 
 
 “Temer is what we’ve got,” Mr. Fausto said. “I hope he’ll be up to the difficult and often highly unpopular tasks ahead of him.” 
 
 Fixing the economy, which may require adopting unpopular austerity measures, is just one of the challenges facing Mr. Temer, 75, a lawyer and career politician who kept a low profile as vice president. 
 
 Brazil is grappling simultaneously with the Zika epidemic, one of its worst health crises in decades; the crash of its oil industry as Petrobras, the national oil company, faces low energy prices and an enormous graft scandal; and doubts over the nation’s preparations for the Olympics in August. 
 
 But the impasse between Ms. Rousseff and her rivals has kept the government in Brasília distracted from these problems, exposing the political establishment to withering scrutiny around the country. 
 
 Ms. Rousseff, an operative in a guerrilla group in her youth, is accused of using money from public banks to cover deficits, masking budget shortfalls in Brazil’s giant federal bureaucracy. She contends that her predecessors enacted similar policies and that the effort to oust her amounts to a coup. 
 
 Still, Ms. Rousseff is rare among top politicians in Brazil in that she has not faced accusations of illegally enriching herself. An array of figures in her Workers’ Party are either in jail or under investigation on charges of graft, dealing a blow to the legitimacy of a party that had vowed to end such practices. 
 
 But fears are growing at the prospect of a government assembled by Mr. Temer. If Ms. Rousseff and the Workers’ Party shift into the opposition, they will most likely claim her ouster was illegal, and Mr. Temer’s top allies remain mired in corruption scandals as well. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Several of his top advisers are under investigation, including Romero Jucá, a senator from Roraima State in the Amazon, and Geddel Vieira Lima, a former executive at one of Brazil’s largest public banks. Mr. Temer has insisted that those inquiries would not prevent him from naming the advisers to his cabinet.
– Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's first female president, was removed from office Wednesday, the New York Times reports. The Brazilian senate voted 61-20 to impeach Rousseff, reports the BBC, covering the two-thirds majority needed. Rousseff, who was suspended in May, was accused of illegally moving government funds between different budgets to hide Brazil's growing economic woes and bolster popular social programs. Rousseff denies any wrongdoing and defended herself in front of the senate Monday, calling her ouster a coup. "From the day after I was elected, several measures were taken to destabilize my government," she said. "And you have been systematically making accusations against me." Acting president Michel Temer is scheduled to be sworn in Wednesday to finish Rousseff's term, which lasts through 2018. His center-right PMDB party ends 13 years in power by the left-wing Workers' Party. However, Temer's approval rating is as bad as Rousseff's, and the PMDB party is already beset by scandals. In fact, Temer's anticorruption minister recently resigned. Rousseff is likely to appeal the impeachment vote in court, though NPR reports she's unlikely to be successful. The senate voted 42-36 to allow her to run for office again, but Rousseff has previously said she'll retire to her hometown if successfully impeached.