The impeachment process against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has entered its final stage with the Senate debating whether to permanently remove the leader from office.
Ms Rousseff is accused of illegally manipulating government accounts and was suspended from office in May pending the impeachment trial, which is now under way.
Here we take a closer look at the impeachment proceedings and how we got here.
What is Ms Rousseff accused of?
Simply put, Ms Rousseff is accused of breaking fiscal laws.
She is suspected of moving funds between government budgets, which is illegal under Brazilian law.
Her critics say she was trying to plug deficit holes in popular social programmes to boost her chances of being re-elected for a second term in October 2014.
Ms Rousseff denies having done anything illegal and says that moving money between budgets was common practice among her predecessors in office.
Who wants her gone?
Ms Rousseff alleges that the impeachment proceedings are tantamount to a coup d"etat against her.
She says the proceedings are being used by her enemies to remove her from office without having to wait for the next presidential election.
Her main rival and a driving force behind the impeachment is the former speaker of the house, Eduardo Cunha.
Mr Cunha"s opponents say he is a political opportunist who switched sides to increase his influence and that of his PMDB party.
To back up their claim, they point to the fact that the PMDB stood to win from the suspension of Ms Rousseff.
Under Brazil"s constitution, the vice-president takes over on an interim basis if the president is suspended from office.
That is how the PMDB"s Michel Temer went from being Ms Rousseff"s vice-president to inaugurating the Olympic Games as Brazil"s acting president.
However, things did not work out smoothly for Mr Cunha either. He had to resign in July over corruption allegations, which he denies.
What do Brazilians think?
Ms Rousseff"s approval ratings have plummeted from their all-time high of 79% in March 2013 to about 10% in March 2016.
There have been mass demonstrations in major Brazilian cities demanding that she resign.
But there have also been smaller rallies in her support.
Many Brazilians say they are fed up with the high levels of corruption in Brazilian politics.
But with some of the politicians who backed her impeachment also under investigation for either mismanagement or corruption, no party seems untouched by the allegations.
What has happened so far?
The lower house of Congress voted on 17 April on whether impeachment proceedings against Ms Rousseff should go ahead.
In a late-night session, 367 out of 513 lawmakers voted in favour, comfortably reaching the two-thirds threshold needed for the matter to be passed to the Senate.
A vote in the Senate followed in May, in which 55 senators voted in favour of the impeachment process going ahead and 22 against.
Another vote was held in the Senate in August which the senators decided by 59 to 21 votes that there was enough evidence against Ms Rousseff to proceed to the trial phase.
What happens next?
The impeachment proceedings entered their final trial phase on 25 August.
Ms Rousseff is scheduled to speak in her defence on 29 August.
She will then be questioned by the senators. A debate follows between her defence and the prosecution.
On 30 August, senators from both sides can speak before the matter goes to the final vote.
While the vote is scheduled for 30 August, its timing could slip.
The final vote
At the end of the proceedings, the full Senate will vote on whether they find Ms Rousseff guilty or innocent.
If two-thirds of the Senate find her guilty, she will be removed from the presidency permanently and barred from running for public office for eight years.
There are 81 senators. It will take 54 to impeach Ms Rousseff.
If she is impeached, acting president Michel Temer will serve out the end of the term, until December 2018.
Should the vote go in her favour, Ms Rousseff will be reinstated.
Ms Rousseff has said that if she is reinstated, she will call early elections so voters have a say on the future of the country"s government.
Brazil impeachment: Key questions
http://latiendadejm.com/blog/brazil-impeachment-key-questions/
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