Brazilian prez ousted

Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday voted to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office, the culmination of a yearlong fight that paralyzed Latin America’s largest nation and exposed deep rifts among its people on everything from race relations to social spending.

While Rousseff ’s ouster was widely expected, the decision was a key chapter in a political struggle that is far from over.

Rousseff (inset) was Brazil’s first female president, with a storied career that included a stint as a Marxist guerrilla jailed and tortured in the 1970s during the country’s military dictatorship.

She was accused of breaking fiscal laws in her oversight of the federal budget.

“The Senate has found that the president of the federal republic of Brazil, Dilma Vana Rousseff, committed crimes in breaking fiscal laws,” said Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski, who presided over the trial.

Opposition lawmakers, who made clear early on that the only solution was getting her out of office, argued that her maneuvers masked deficits from high spending and exacerbated the country’s recession.

Rouseff professed her innocence up to the end, saying the push to remove her was a bloodless coup by elites fuming over the populist policies of her Workers’ Party.

The opposition needed 54 of 81 senators to vote for her to be removed. They got many more, winning in a landslide, 61-20.

In the background of the fight was a wide-ranging investigation into billions of dollars in kickbacks at state oil company Petrobras.

The two-year probe has led to the jailing of dozens of top businessmen and politicians from across the political spectrum, and threatens many of the lawmakers who voted to oust Rousseff.

Rousseff argued that many opponents just wanted her out so they could save their own skins by tampering with the investigation, which she had refused to do.