Brazil's lower house votes to impeach president Dilma Rousseff

Lawmakers in Brazil's lower house of Congress voted overnight to impeach president Dilma Rousseff in what many hope will lead to a change of course in the country's economic policies, although some observers fretted that social instability might lie ahead instead.

On Sunday evening, 367 deputies backed the ouster of Rousseff, 25 more than were needed for the motion to be approved and passed to the Senate, where the opposition was expected to be able to easily approve the measure.

A successful vote in the Senate could see Rousseff forced to step down temporarily in favour of her vice president, Michel Temer, from the PMDB party.

South America's largest economy and most populous country had been wracked by two years of recession that had pushed the government deficit to 11.0% of gross domestic product.

The formal reason for Rousseff's impeachment is that her government used loans from state-owned lenders to mask the true state of Brazil's public finances before the last general elections.

However, for the average man on the street she is also under heavy suspicion for the unfolding corruption scandal surrounding state-owned oil giant Petrobas, including during her time at the helm of that company.

In the previous week media leaked a recording in which Temer laid out his vision for the country, in which he called for maintaining welfare payments, but cutting constitutionally-mandated spending, raising the retirement age and boosting the role of the private sector in the economy.

However, while a crowd of quarter of a million people reportedly gathered in Sao Paolo to cheer her impeachment, the country's attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo, said that "no government that is born this way will be able to pacify the country."

According to a recent poll by Datafolha, 61.0% of Brazilians wanted Rousseff ousted, although another 58.0% wanted the same for Temer.

In remarks to Bloomberg TV, Carlos Cardenas, IHS Senior Country Risk Analyst, said six months of policy paralysis were likely in Brazil as the power struggle unfolded.

As of 08:31 BST the US dollar was 1.41% stronger versus the Brazilian real at 3.53, with news over the weekend of a lack of an agreement between the oil producing nations meeting in Doha possibly weighing on the South American country's currency and masking any gains after news of the impeachment vote.