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Brazil's Senate pressed ahead with the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff Monday, despite the lower house interim speaker's decision earlier in the day to annul the chamber's vote for removing her from office.
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The head of the Senate, Renan Calheiros, said that a vote in the upper house on whether to put Rousseff on trial would continue as scheduled.
The Senate is expected to vote this week on whether it will try Rousseff for breaking budgetary laws. If it decides in favor of doing so, Rousseff will be immediately suspended for up to six months as the trial proceeds.
Maranhao, who was installed as interim head of the lower chamber after the suspension of Cunha, said the number of irregularities during the voting procedure led him to annul the April 17 vote.
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The petition to annul the vote was made by Brazil's attorney general.
According to Maranhao, lawmakers should not have announced their intention to vote one way or another as it constitutes "a clear offense to the wide right to defense that is consecrated in the constitution."
Maranhao also said that according to the lower chamber's internal rules, the impeachment vote should have been formalized into a resolution.
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