Rousseff impeachment vote: Brazil Senate set to decide

Brazil's Senate is debating whether President Dilma Rousseff should face a full impeachment trial.

If a simple majority votes in favour, as is expected, Ms Rousseff will be automatically suspended from office.

Ms Rousseff made a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to stop proceedings, but the move was rejected.

The president is accused of illegally manipulating finances to hide a growing public deficit ahead of her re-election in 2014, which she denies.

The debate has been running for hours. Sixty-eight senators originally registered to speak and two more added their names to the list during the proceedings, bringing the total to 70.

Brazilians are following the Senate debate on national television (Image Source: AP)

By 21:15 local time (00:15 GMT), 30 senators had spoken. Of those, 24 spoke in favour of an impeachment trial and six against.

Senator Fatima Bezerra from Ms Rousseff's Workers's Party said she would "vote against this farce".

"Those who back this coup d'etat won't ever be forgiven," she warned.

The other senators to back Ms Rousseff were Jorge Viana and Angela Portela, also of the Workers' Party.

But there were also three senators from other parties who opposed the impeachment.

They were Temario Mota of the Democratic Workers' Party, Randolfe Rodrigues of REDE and Roberto Requiao of the PMDB.

Senator Viana called the impeachment proceedings "institutional anarchy" while Senator Mota said that "this impeachment was born of revenge, hatred and revenge".

Among those who backed the impeachment trial was Aecio Neves, who lost to Ms Rousseff in the 2014 presidential election.

Aecio Neves lost to Ms Rousseff in the 2014 election (Image Source: AP)

He said Ms Rousseff had led the country into its worst crisis in more than a century.

Earlier, former football player Romario, who is now a senator for the Brazilian Socialist Party, also referred to Brazil's economic problems, calling it "a very serious crisis".

Football star-turned-senator Romario said he would vote in favour of the impeachment trial (Image Source: Reuters)

Senator Jose Agripino Maia accused the governing Workers' Party of "getting too accustomed to spending" beyond its means.

One of the most passionate speakers in favour of the impeachment trial was Magno Malta of the Party of the Republic.

He compared the government of Ms Rousseff to "gangrene" which needed to be removed to make Brazil healthy again.

But the atmosphere in the upper house is a far cry from the packed lower house session on 17 April.

The session in the Senate has been a lot calmer than that in the lower house on 17 April (Image Source: Reuters)

Many seats are empty and senators can be heard chatting amongst themselves while the speeches are going on.

Mr Calheiros called the senators to order and told them to "pay attention and put their phones away".