The
full Senate is expected to vote on the matter by mid-May.
Millions
of Brazilians have called for the president to be impeached, but her supporters
accuse the opposition of mounting a coup.
Here
we take a closer look at the problems in Brazil
and what has gone wrong since President Rousseff was re-elected for a second
term in October 2014.
President
Dilma Rousseff's approval ratings have plummeted since she narrowly won her
second presidential election in October 2014.
According
to a Datafolha
poll (in Portuguese) released on 11 April, 63% of respondents across the
country said her government was "bad or terrible", with only 13%
saying it was "good or excellent".
Experts
say this reflects voters' disillusionment with a deep recession and a
corruption scandal involving the state-controlled oil company Petrobras.
The
investigation into the corruption scandal, dubbed Operation Car Wash, has
implicated important figures from Ms Rousseff Workers' Party, but also some of
her opponents.
Brazil's
Attorney General has requested that the Supreme Court open an investigation
into the alleged role of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the
scandal.
Lula
is not just Ms Rousseff's predecessor in the top job, but also her mentor and
political ally and charges against him would reflect extremely negatively on Ms
Rousseff.
Fight
against impeachment
The
impeachment motion against President Rousseff is based on allegations that she
manipulated the government's accounts in 2014 when she was seeking re-election.
She
denies any wrongdoing and has accused her rivals of mounting a coup.
The vote in
the lower house on 17 March in favour of the
impeachment proceedings going ahead was a serious setback for Ms Rousseff.
Out
of 513 members of the lower house, 367 voted in favour, exceeding by a
comfortable margin the two-thirds majority needed to send the case to the
Senate.
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