Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff lost a key legal battle when a federal audit court rejected her government’s accounts from 2014 on Wednesday, paving the way for opponents to try to impeach her.
Congress must still decide whether she broke Brazil’s budget law, an impeachable offense.
Following are the steps of a presidential impeachment under Brazil’s Constitution:
1) Any citizen can file an impeachment request to Congress. More than 20 have already been filed to impeach Rousseff. Most have been shelved as groundless, but seven are under study by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, a declared enemy of the president.
2) Cunha has the power to decide whether to accept one of the requests. A special committee made up of members of all parties analyses the request, which needs two-thirds support, or 342 of the votes in the lower house, for an impeachment trial to begin in the Senate. Cunha’s own position has been shaken by corruption charges against him and he is under pressure to explain undeclared Swiss bank accounts that prosecutors have found in his name. Rousseff appears to have enough votes at present to block an impeachment vote.
Brazil Energy Insight 
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