Brazil's Senate is expected to vote on Wednesday to dismiss President Dilma Rousseff, finalizing a nine-month impeachment process and confirming the country's shift to the center-right with the end of 13 years of leftist Workers Party rule.
Rousseff's supporters seemed resigned to the likelihood that more than two-thirds of the 81-member Senate would convict her of breaking budget laws, while opponents hailed the chance to turn the page on a drawn-out economic and political crisis.
Brazil's first female president has denied any wrongdoing and said the impeachment process was aimed at protecting the interests of the country's economic elite.
If Rousseff is convicted as expected, a tricky transition would fall to her conservative former vice president, Michel Temer, who has served as interim president since the Senate trial began in May and will finish out her term through to 2018.
The Senate will meet at 11 a.m. (12:00 p.m. EDT) to vote on a verdict. Temer's chief of staff, Eliseu Padilha, said in a Twitter message that the government expects 60 to 61 votes against Rousseff, a comfortable majority that would confirm Temer in office.
Temer has vowed to boost an economy that has shrunk for six consecutive quarters and implement austerity measures to plug a record budget deficit, which cost Brazil its investment-grade status last year.
Earlier in the day, the government said that gross domestic product contracted 0.6 percent in the second quarter, putting the economy on track to post its longest and harshest recession in more than a century.
Still, expectations that the political stalemate could end soon with Rousseff's impeachment helped bolster investment, which expanded in the second quarter for the first time in three years.
NOT AN EASY PATH
But even an overwhelming vote to remove Rousseff would not mean an easy path for Temer, as there are signs of clear resistance in Congress to his proposals to cap public spending and reform public pensions.
His government also risks entanglement in a sweeping investigation of kickbacks at state oil company Petrobras that already has ensnared dozens of politicians in Rousseff's coalition.
The scandal, which also has tarnished Temer's fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, could hobble efforts to restore stability to Brazilian politics and confidence in the economy.
Temer is so sure of the trial's outcome that he is planning an address to the nation on Wednesday, his aides say. It would follow his expected swearing-in by Congress and a Cabinet meeting to outline his policy priorities.
He then plans to fly to China for a summit of the G20 group of leading economies, hoping to secure pledges of trade and investment.
Rousseff's popularity fell into single figures this year due to the Petrobras graft scandal and the recession that many Brazilians blame on her government's interventionist policies.
In an emotional speech on Monday, Rousseff compared the trial to her persecution under Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, when she was tortured by security services as a member of a leftist urban guerrilla group.
If convicted by the Senate, Rousseff would become the first Brazilian leader dismissed from office since 1992, when Fernando Collor de Mello resigned before a final vote in his impeachment trial for corruption.
Source: Reuters
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