The 59-21 vote is the final step before a trial and vote on whether to remove her from office, expected later this month.
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In an address in Brasilia on August 16, Rousseff repeated her claim that she had been formally accused of no crime and that her removal from office would be “a coup”.
FILE – In this December 13, 2015 file photo, a woman holds a sign that reads in Portuguese; “Dilma Out” during a demonstration in favor of the impeachment of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff, on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The warm vibe of the Rio Olympic Games faded and tension returned as the emotionally-charged affair neared its climax, threatening to end 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America’s biggest economy.
President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial is only one of the major issues facing Brazil that the 2016 Rio Olympics provided a brief break from-there’s also the rampant poverty, widespread violence, a Zika outbreak, and government corruption. The Associated Press explains how we got to this point and how the trial is likely to play out.
Four years later, with the economy slowing and corruption allegations tainting their party, Rousseff faced a bruising re-election campaign. Should she be convicted of violating the constitution by approving finances without informing Congress, she will be removed from office and won’t be able to run again for years.
In April, Brazil’s lower house of parliament, the House of Deputies, passed the impeachment measure by a wide margin.
Accused of cooking the government’s books to make the deficit look smaller, Rousseff lost a series of key allies, culminating in the defection of her vice president, Michel Temer – now interim president – and his powerful centrist party, the PMDB. Rousseff says other former presidents used similar accounting techniques.
The timeline for the event was announced last week by the president of the Supreme Court (STF), Ricardo Lewandowski, who will oversee the trial.
A huge metal barricade has been erected on the esplanade outside Congress to separate rival demonstrators, with large protests expected Monday. A vote is expected by the middle of next week. He needs 54 out of the 81 possible votes – but so far, 48 senators have publicly declared themselves favorable to the definitive impeachment.
Rousseff, who was tortured and imprisoned by the 1970s dictatorship for membership in a Marxist urban guerrilla group, has sworn to resist what she calls a coup.
Investors have piled into the real this year on speculation that a new government would improve the country’s finances and end the deepest recession in a century after Brazil lost its investment-grade credit rating last year.
Temer will focus his efforts overseas on convincing leaders and investors that the worst is over for Latin America’s largest economy, according to the government official.
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The vote will cap an nearly nine-month impeachment process that exacerbated the worst recession in decades and paved the way for Rousseff’s suspension from office in May. If the Senate votes to permanently remove Rousseff, Temer will serve the rest of her term, which goes through 2018. He casts himself as a reluctant savior who just wants to do what’s best for a divided country, and denies Rousseff’s accusations that he’s the ringleader in the push to oust her. But previous appeals during the process have failed.
