Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was formally removed from office on Wednesday, following an impeachment vote by the Brazilian senate.
Rousseff, the country’s first female Head of State, was convicted by the Senate by a wide margin, with 61 voting for conviction, compared to just 20 against.
Replacing Ms. Rousseff is Michel Temer, who has served as Acting President since Rousseff was suspended by the Senate in May of this year.
Rousseff’s downfall came after her left-wing government was embroiled in a series of scandals, including accusations officials, including Rousseff herself, used fraudulent data to conceal Brazil’s exploding deficit, hiding expenditures and inflating tax revenue figures.
The impeachment also marks the end of nearly 14 years of rule by the left-wing Workers’ Party, which governed Brazil ever since the October 2002 elections.
Rousseff’s successor, Temer, is a member of the centrist Democratic Movement Party, and has already replaced much of the Rousseff cabinet, shifting the government away from the hard-left.
But Temer’s DMP, a coalition partner of the Workers’ Party, has itself been implicated in some of the scandals plaguing the Brazilian government, leaving the country’s new leader with low approval ratings even before he formally took office.