国际英语新闻:Spotlight: Brazil's Senate to vote on impeachment trial for Rousseff as political chaos unde

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 11 (Xinhua) -- 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.