Defiant Rousseff faces impeachment in senate

Brazil's Senate opened debate yesterday ahead of a vote on suspending President Dilma Rousseff and launching an impeachment trial that could bring down the curtain on 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America's biggest country.

Even allies of Rousseff, 68, said she had no chance of surviving the vote. She is accused of illegal accounting manoeuvres but says the charges are trumped up and amount to a coup d'etat by her centre-right opponents.

Debate was expected to last all day with a vote during the night or early hours today. A simple majority in the 81 member Senate would be enough to trigger Rousseff's six-month suspension pending judgment, in which a two thirds majority would force her from office permanently.

Senate President Renan Calheiros, who was overseeing the proceedings, told journalists that impeachment would be "traumatic" for Brazil, which is already struggling with the worst recession in decades and a corruption scandal that has ripped apart the political and business elite.

"The process of impeachment... is long, traumatic and does not produce quick results," Calheiros warned.

Rousseff's government lawyer lodged a last-ditch appeal with the Supreme Court on Tuesday to block the vote, but the court had not even responded before senators sat down in their futuristic building in the capital Brasilia.

"There won't be any miracle. She'll be suspended for six months and then we'll open the debate on the merits" of the case, Paulo Paim, a senator of Rousseff's Workers' Party (PT), told reporters.

He said the impeachment drive was "a symbol of Brazilian politicians' incompetence, to accept a tainted process against a president they know is honest."

Rousseff is accused of breaking budgetary laws by taking loans to boost public spending and mask the sinking state of the economy during her 2014 re-election campaign.