Spotlight: Brazil's Senate to vote on impeachment trial for Rousseff as political chaos underway

The impeachment process of Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff came to a critical point on Wednesday, with a voting which can - and most likely will - result in the president being suspended from office.

The Senate is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to begin impeachment proceedings against Rousseff. A simple majority for the motion will remove the president from the position and force her to face a final trial, which should be scheduled within 180 days.

In that case, which is highly likely, Vice President Michel Temer will temporarily take the rein of the country now mired in political chaos.

The situation now is controversial and potentially incendiary.

Rousseff sees Temer as one of the masterminds of the impeachment process. She has been vocal in denouncing what she considers a coup orchestrated by her running mate and Eduardo Cunha, who was recently suspended from his position of lower house speaker by a Supreme Court decision.

Tuesday, the government made a final move to try to halt the process: Attorney-General Jose Eduardo Cardozo filed an injunction at the Supreme Court to cancel the impeachment, on the grounds that there were procedural flaws during the impeachment process.

The case is being analyzed by Supreme Court Judge Teori Zavascki. His decision is expected to be announced before the Senate voting and may be a new turnaround in the already complicated case.

THE IMPEACHMENT

Rousseff is being impeached for allegedly committing a crime of fiscal responsibility by signing some decrees which altered the budget without consulting the Congress. A crime of responsibility is a requirement foreseen in Brazilian Constitution in order to impeach a president.

The problem is that the fiscal measures to which Rousseff resorted are common practice in Brazilian administrations, and their legality has never been questioned until now.

As Rousseff herself said earlier this week, while she signed six decrees of this kind last year, one of her predecessors, Fernando Henrique Cardoso -- whose party is now in the opposition and is most vocal about the impeachment -- signed dozens in a similar period.

At least 16 governors signed the same decrees since their term started in January 2015. Temer signed several decrees last year, while standing for the president. Their decisions, unlike Rousseff's, have not been questioned so far.

While one may not agree with Rousseff's stance that the impeachment process is a coup, it is hard to deny that the process is filled with controversial and shady aspects, which the government was quick to denounce. The participation of Eduardo Cunha, for example, is essential to the process.

In the first half of 2015, as Rousseff started her second term, after being elected with the narrowest margin in Brazilian history, the opposition started its efforts to take her down, first trying to annul the results of the election, which proved fruitless, and later by campaigning for her impeachment.

At the time, Temer and Cunha, both affiliated to the largest allied party in Rousseff's coalition, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), said there was no legal basis for an impeachment case.

As lower house speaker, it was up to Cunha to accept any impeachment requests against the president, starting the formal process, and he quickly disregarded the many requests.

However, things began to change when the Lava Jato (Carwash) Operation, the mega Federal Police operation which uncovered a major corruption scheme surrounding Petrobras, started to get too close to Cunha.

He was accused of taking major bribes, and, later on, Swiss authorities revealed that Cunha had four undeclared accounts in Swiss banks, with an amount of money he never declared and whose origins were shady at best.

Investigations indicated that the money originated from massive bribes taken by Cunha to favor some companies in Petrobras contracts. A process to investigate him in the lower house's Ethics committee was to be opened, but the ruling Workers' Party (PT) had seats in the Committee and could halt the process before it even started.

Cunha appealed to PT, but the party, under pressure from its own members, denied help. In the very same day, Cunha changed his mind and decided that the impeachment process against Rousseff had sufficient legal basis.

The attorney general accused Cunha of abusing his power and opened an impeachment process in a vendetta, but Cunha denied it.

PMDB'S ROLE

Though Cunha and Rousseff had never liked each other, PMDB remained a coalition party. However, its support to the government was crumbling.

Another major figure of the party, Vice-President Temer, was very dissatisfied with his and the party's role in the administration, as evidenced by a letter leaked to the press in late 2015.

In a somewhat whiny tone which was mocked at the time, Temer listed in the letter a series of grievances and complaints. The letter was regarded as a sign that Temer and his allies in PMDB were more inclined to jump ship than they had been in the past.

After the beginning of the impeachment process, in December, rumors started about PMDB's decision to jump out of the government.

The party denied such rumors at first, but by late March, in a national convention, it decided to leave the coalition -- a decision attributed mainly to Temer's group inside the party.

PMDB publicly took a stance for the impeachment, increasing the tensions in relation to the Vice-President, who now clearly seemed to be working to take down Rousseff in order to get her place.

The decision sped up the impeachment process, with lower house voting scheduled for April. After PMDB, other smaller parties in the coalition started to publicly consider leaving the coalition as well, and some did, leaving the government without congressional support in a crucial moment.

TO THE VERY END

Regardless of the seriousness - and some might argue, hopelessness - of the situation, President Rousseff repeatedly said she will resist until the very end.

In a ceremony on Tuesday, she said she is tired of traitors and backstabbers, but reiterated her intent of "honoring the 54 million votes" she received by resisting with all her strength.

Regional organizations such as the Organization of American States, the South American Union and the South American Market and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights expressed concerns about the legality of the impeachment process. Endit