Brazil’s parliament voted to impeach the country’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, on Wednesday, ending her five year reign. The vote ended 61–20 and leaves her Vice President Michel Temer in charge.
The campaign against Rousseff picked up after news of a corruption scandal broke in 2014 involving Petrobras — the semi-public petroleum company she helmed from 2010–2014. There is no available evidence linking Rousseff with the corruption scandal, but it happened on her watch. Protests followed, though Rousseff supporters also counter protested and claimed she was the victim of an attempted coup.
Income inequality in Brazil is a major issue, especially since the economy entered a nosedive in recent years, and Rousseff’s connection to Petrobras ultimately led to her downfall. It didn’t help either that many members of her left-leaning Workers’ Party were implicated in the scandal for receiving bribes.
Rousseff’s fall was expedited by the political elite who opposed her policies and her appeals to the lower classes. She sent a warning out to her successors about the ease with which she was removed from power.
“This is serious because other presidents of the republic will have to deal with this,” Rousseff said this week in her testimony in the Senate. “If that isn’t political instability, then I don’t know what is.”
She also certainly wasn’t helped by a second scandal that arose when she tried to appoint her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to her cabinet after he was implicated in the Petrobras scandal. Rousseff allegedly wanted to protect da Silva from criminal charges and the Brazilian public saw this as another act of the powerful trying to screw the powerless without repercussions.
Rousseff’s removal spells the end for the Workers’ Party rule in Brazil — a reign that lasted 13 years. Her replacement, Temer, is part of the Democratic Brazilian Movement Party which has also been implicated in Brazil’s recent corruption scandals. The country is expected to face a period of instability as Temer’s approval ratings are equally abysmal as Rousseff’s.
As she prepares to leave office, her supporters are already mourning her departure.
“Dilma is a champion of the poor,” said Creuza Maria Oliveira, the president of the National Federation of Domestic Workers, which represents millions of maids who the New York Times reports benefited from the strengthening of labor laws by Rousseff. “Temer is a champion of his own political class, which he wants to shield from justice.”