Protests against impeachment could not stop the lawmakers

Brazilian lawmakers have reached 342 votes, the two thirds majority necessary to authorise impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff.

The lower house vote sends Rousseff’s case to the Senate, which can vote to open a trial.

It now means the Senate will open a formal impeachment trial in the coming weeks.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff

Should a two-thirds margin in the Senate be reached in its final vote, Rousseff would be removed from office, and Vice President Michel Temer from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, which has quit the ruling coalition, would become president.

In a spirited exchange on the Chamber floor, lawmakers were given their turn to briefly explain their votes. The proceeding was televised live.

Wild cheering erupted from the opposition at the 342nd vote, countered by furious jeering from Rousseff allies in a snapshot of the radical and bitter mood consuming Brazil just four months before Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympics.

Outside Congress, where tens of thousands of people were watching giant TV screens, the split was echoed on a mass scale — with opposition supporters partying and Rousseff loyalists in despair.

“I am happy, happy, happy. I spent a year demonstrating in hope that Dilma would be brought down,” said retiree Maristela de Melo, 63.

Several thousand police stood by and the rival camps were separated by a long metal wall.

If, as many expect, the Senate goes on to impeach the leftist president, Vice President Michel Temer — who abandoned Rousseff to become a key opponent — will assume power.

But opposition celebrations could be short lived, analysts say.

Temer would inherit a country wallowing in its deepest recession in decades and a dysfunctional political scene where Rousseff’s Workers’ Party vows revenge.

“It will not be easy” for Temer, said Andre Cesar, an independent political analyst. “It will be a nightmare.”

Rouseff, 68, is accused of illegal accounting maneuvers to mask government shortfalls during her 2014 reelection. Many Brazilians also hold her responsible for the economic mess and a massive corruption scandal centered on state oil company Petrobras, a toxic record that has left her government with 10 percent approval ratings.

The president and her allies had lobbied frantically in a last-minute effort to turn the tide, with her mentor, the fiery ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, flying back from his home in Sao Paulo to join the final assault.

Now the decision by the lower house moves the matter to the Senate, which is expected to vote in May on whether to open a trial. In case of a green light there, too — which experts also consider almost certain — Rousseff would step down for 180 days while the trial got under way.

If the Senate then voted by a two-thirds majority for impeachment, Rousseff would be ousted. Temer would stay on until elections in 2018.

A senior Rousseff ally said there would be no surrender.

“The coup plotters have won here in the house,” said Jose Guimaraes, leader of the Workers’ Party in the lower house of Congress.

“President Dilma (Rousseff’s) government recognises this temporary defeat but that does not mean that the war is over,” Guimaraes said. “The fight will continue in the streets and in the Senate.”