Brazil's Senate ousted President Dilma Rousseff on Wednesday, ending an impeachment process that polarized Latin America's biggest country amid a massive corruption scandal and brutal economic crisis.
Senators voted 61-20 to convict the country's first female president for illegally using money from state banks to bankroll public spending, marking the end of 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule.
Rousseff's opponents hailed her removal as paving the way for a change of fortunes for Brazil. Her conservative successor, Michel Temer, the former vice president who has run Brazil since her suspension in May, inherits a bitterly divided nation with voters in no mood for the austerity measures needed to heal public finances.
In his first televised address to the nation after being sworn in as president through 2018, Temer called on Brazilians to unite behind him in working to rescue the economy from a fiscal crisis and over 11 percent unemployment.
"This moment is one of hope and recovery of confidence in Brazil. Uncertainty has ended," Temer said in the speech broadcast after his departure for a G20 summit in China.
Until just a few years ago, Brazil was booming economically and its status was rising on the global stage.
The country then slid into its deepest recession in decades, and a graft scandal at state oil company Petrobras tarnished Rousseff's coalition. Millions took to the streets this year to demand her removal, less than two years after she was re-elected.
Temer will likely face tough opposition from the Workers Party both on the streets and in Congress to his agenda of privatizations, reforms to Brazil's generous pension and welfare laws and a public spending ceiling he hopes lawmakers will pass this year.
For the third straight day, pro-Rousseff demonstrators in Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, clashed with riot police, who used tear gas to clear the streets.
