Updated 7.26pm - Senate votes not to bar Rousseff from public office

Brazil's Senate removed President Dilma Rousseff from office today for breaking budgetary laws, ending an impeachment process that has polarised the scandal-plagued country and paralysed its politics for nine months.

Senators voted 61-20 to convict Rousseff for illegally using money from state banks to boost public spending, putting an end to 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule in Latin America's largest economy.

Senate President Renan Calheiros holds the Constitution of Brazil during today's session. Photo: Reuters

Conservative Michel Temer, the former vice president who has run Brazil since Rousseff's suspension in May, will be sworn in on Wednesday to serve out the remainder of the presidential term through 2018.

In a separate vote, senators decided that the former president should not be barred from holding public office.

Senators voted 42-36 to allow Rousseff to maintain her political rights, short of the two-thirds needed to bar her. 

Brazil's first female president has denied any wrongdoing and said the impeachment process was aimed at protecting the interests of the country's economic elite and rolling back social programs that lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty during the last decade.

Her opponents, however, have hailed the chance to turn the page on a drawn-out political crisis, the country's worst recession in generations and a sweeping corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras .

Motorists honked car horns in the Brazilian capital in a blaring tribute to the removal of a president whose popularity had dwindled to single figures since winning re-election in 2014.

In Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, fireworks exploded in celebration after the vote.

Temer has vowed to boost an economy that has shrunk for six consecutive quarters and implement austerity measures to plug a record budget deficit, which cost Brazil its investment-grade credit rating last year.

However, he is likely to face bitter political opposition from the Workers Party, which has vowed to take to the streets in protest.

A weary-looking Dilma Rousseff at today's session. Photo: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters