Temer ally voted new house speaker in Brazil

14 Jul, 2016

BRASMLIA: Brazil's lower house of Congress elected an ally of interim president Michel Temer as its new speaker Thursday, replacing the embattled Eduardo Cunha, an architect of impeachment proceedings against suspended president Dilma Rousseff.

Rodrigo Maia of the right-wing Democrats party was elected with 285 out of 460 votes in a second-round election in the Chamber of Deputies.

That puts the 46-year-old banker first in line to succeed the president in Latin America's largest economy.

After months of political upheaval, Temer, Rousseff's vice president, took over from her on May 12, when the Senate suspended her to face an impeachment trial over accusations of fudging the government's accounts to make them look better in an election year.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2016

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