BRASILIA, Brazil -- Brazil's Senate voted early Thursday to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, who later vowed to use "all legal means" to fight permanent ouster in an impeachment trial.
Speaking hours after the Senate vote, the nation's first female president blasted the process as "fraudulent" and said it was an injustice more painful than the torture she endured under a past military dictatorship.
She again rejected critics' accusation that she had used illegal accounting tricks in managing the federal budget.
"I may have committed errors but I never committed crimes," Rousseff said during a 14-minute address, flanked by dozens of top officials and brass from her left-leaning Workers' Party.
Later, Rousseff's vice president who will now be her replacement, Michel Temer, called for unity, promising to improve the economy and support a corruption investigation at state oil company Petrobras.
"Now is not a moment for celebrations, but rather for profound reflection," he said, adding that reducing unemployment was a top government priority.
The Senate's decision came after a monthslong battle that laid bare the country's fury over corruption and economic decay just months before it hosts the Summer Olympics.
Speaking to several thousand supporters as she left the Planalto presidential palace, Rousseff said the accusations are nothing more than a red herring, part of a "coup" orchestrated by her power-hungry foes.
"I am the victim of a great injustice," she said, adding, "I fought my whole life, and I'm going to keep fighting."
Rousseff repeatedly has said she would fight but hasn't said how, and most avenues have already been closed off. Up until now, the Supreme Federal Court, the country's highest court, has declined to weigh in on the merits of the case against her.
The Senate has 180 days to conduct a trial and decide whether Rousseff should be removed permanently from office -- in which case Temer would serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in December 2018.
Some of her supporters have promised a campaign of protests and strikes that could complicate the efforts of the interim president to govern.
Impeachment supporters contend Temer, a career politician and constitutional expert who has published a collection of poetry, is the best hope for reversing Brazil's economic collapse.
Temer, 75, has promised to cut spending and privatize many sectors controlled by the state. Still, he repeatedly has denied Rousseff's allegations he intends to dismantle the popular social programs that helped the Workers' Party lift an estimated 35 million people out of poverty during its 13 years in power.
The markets reacted positively to news of Rousseff's impeachment and the Brazilian currency, the real -- which has fallen against the dollar over the past year -- continued its recent rebound.
When the impeachment measure was introduced last year in Congress, it was generally viewed as a long shot.
But former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha built momentum behind the process. Rousseff contends that Cunha, who was suspended last week over allegations of corruption and obstruction of justice, used the impeachment to get revenge on her.
Analysts say that Rousseff's lack of skill as a politician and Brazil's tanking economy played major roles in her undoing. The Brazilian economy is expected to contract nearly 4 percent after an equally dismal 2015, and inflation and unemployment are hovering at about 10 percent, putting the country in a decline after a decade of growth.
Making matters worse for Rousseff, a graft scheme at Brazil's state-run Petrobras oil company revealed deep-seated corruption that cut across the political spectrum, ensnaring top officials from the Workers' Party and the opposition alike, as well as some of the country's top businessmen.
While polls have shown a majority of Brazilians support impeaching Rousseff, they also suggest the public is wary about those in the line to take her place.
"Dilma is a bad president, and waiting until 2018 was a horrible option," said cabdriver Alessandro Novais in Rio de Janeiro, minutes after the vote. "I don't think Temer will be much better, but at least we can try something different to overcome the crisis."
Temer has been implicated in the Petrobras corruption scheme, as has Renan Calheiros, the Senate head who is now No. 2 in the line of succession.
In her parting words at the presidential palace, Rousseff evoked her travails under the 1964-85 military dictatorship, when she was imprisoned.
She said that neither the pain she was subjected to by the regime's torturers nor the suffering she would later survive as a cancer patient compare to the feeling at being what she regards as unjustly removed from office.
"It's the most brutal thing that can happen to a human being to be condemned for a crime you didn't commit. There is no more devastating injustice," she said before leaving the palace, perhaps for the last time.
A Section on 05/13/2016