Debate on Brazil's president future slogs on into the night

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil's Senate on Wednesday night slowly neared a historic vote on impeaching President Dilma Rousseff, likely ending 13 years of government by her left-leaning party amid a spate of crises besetting Latin America's largest nation.

Brazil is mired in the worst economic downturn in decades and a sprawling corruption scandal centered on the state-run Petrobras oil company has soured the national mood, even as the country gears up to host South America's first Olympic Games in August.

Supporters of impeachment blame Rousseff and her Workers' Party for the stalled economy and insist that Vice President Michel Temer, whose party has split from the governing coalition, represents the only hope of reviving it.

Some pro-impeachment senators said they expected as many as 60 votes in favor of the impeachment, which would send a strong signal that Rousseff's faced a slim chance to emerge victorious from the trial and resume her mandate that ends in December 2018.

Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who was incarcerated and tortured under Brazil's 1964-1981 military dictatorship, was the hand-picked successor to her once wildly popular mentor, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

To make matters worse, just as prices for commodities that are the lifeblood of Brazil's economy started tumbling, investigators began uncovering the multibillion-dollar kickback scheme at Petrobras.

While those ensnared in the scandal come from across the political spectrum, many of the people implicated are top officials in Rousseff's party, and that tarnished her reputation.

The Senate action came after the lower house voted 367-137 last month in favor of impeachment, an anti-Rousseff verdict so resounding that many Brazilians believed it would influence the Senate.