Brasilia, Aug 31.- Brazil’s Senate voted 61-20 on Wednesday to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office over budget irregularities.

The decision means that Michel Temer, who became interim president May 12, will serve the remainder of Rousseff’s 2015-2019 term.

The impeachment process, which began last December, has been denounced by Rousseff and her supporters – and even some of her critics – as a coup against a popularly elected president.

The senators who voted to oust Rousseff began singing the Brazilian national anthem as soon as the tally was announced, but the euphoria was cut short by the need to hold a second vote on suspending the deposed president’s political rights.

Only 42 senators, well short of the necessary two-thirds majority, voted in favor of barring Rousseff from public office for eight years.

Rousseff was accused of bypassing Congress to alter budgets by decree and taking too long to reimburse state-controlled banks for funds used to pay for government programs, a delay that her opponents say amounted to taking out illegal loans from those institutions.

The now-former president pointed out that those budget maneuvers were common practice under previous Brazilian administrations.

In the final debate before Wednesday’s vote, Rousseff’s defenders spoke of a constitutional rupture and blasted pro-impeachment senators as “swine.”

“This is a farce, farce, farce. It’s a process based solely on pretexts that will be judged by history,” Sen. Lindbergh Farias, of Rousseff’s Workers Party, said.

Right-wing Sen. Ronaldo Caiado didn’t mince any words in his response.

“The swine are those who enriched themselves illegally, the swine are those who bankrupted (state oil company) Petrobras, the swine are those who left Brazil in a critical situation,” he said.

Petrobras lost an estimated $2 billion to a years-long corruption scheme involving prominent figures in all of Brazil’s major political parties, while South America’s largest economy shrank 3.8 percent last year and is expected to contract by 3.2 percent in 2016.

The lower house of Congress voted 367-137 on April 17 in favor of impeaching Rousseff.

Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper noted following the vote that while 318 of the 594 members of the lower house are under investigation or face charges, Rousseff, “herself faces no allegation of financial impropriety.”

In his time as interim president, Temer – also suspected of corruption – has pushed privatizations and sales of state assets, ideas that are strongly opposed by the majority of those who voted to give Rousseff a second four-year term in October 2014.

The 68-year-old Rousseff, a former guerrilla who was jailed and tortured under Brazil’s 1964-1985 military regime, is the first female president of the giant South American nation. EFE