Rousseff is accused of manipulating the Brazilian federal budget to hide the scale of the nation’s economic problems. During her speech, she argued she was innocent, and that the charges brought against her were part of a conspiracy The president’s opponents need two-thirds of the Senate , or 54 votes, to convict her. Michel Temer, current interim president and former vice president , will hold the presidency until the end of the term in 2018 if Rousseff is found guilty.President Dilma Rousseff has been suspended and stripped of her official duties following a vote by Brazil's Senate to impeach her. The Guardian reports that the motion to impeach the country's first female president passed by a vote of 55 to 22.Rousseff will have to step away from her duties for at least six months, at which point she will be put on trial to face charges of manipulating government accounts. Vice President Michel Temer is now serving as Brazil's interim president.The impeachment process against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has taken an unexpected turn. Just days ahead of a Senate vote about whether her impeachment trial should proceed, the acting speaker of the country's lower house annulled the previous vote, the BBC reports. It's now unclear whether Wednesday's Senate vote will still take place.This story was originally published on April 20, 2016.When Brazil elected the first female president in its history, many were understandably excited.Dilma Rousseff is one of just 17 elected female heads of state or government out of the nearly 200 countries in the world. And Rousseff, a member of the left-wing Workers' Party, campaigned on promises to help the poor in one of the countries with the greatest income inequality in the world, according to the World Bank But five years later, Rousseff is now trying to fight off those who want to oust her from office. In a humiliating move that means she might be forced out, Brazil's lower house of Congress voted Sunday by a wide margin to approve an impeachment.

After three days of debates, the vote tally from the Chamber of Deputies in favor of impeachment against Rousseff was 367 versus the 137 legislators who voted against the measure. The tally easily surpassed the required two-thirds majority. There were seven abstentions and two deputies did not vote."This is a sad moment" for Brazil, said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. It’s the second time in 25 years that a Brazilian president is facing impeachment. Fernando Collor de Mello, president from 1990 to 1992, stepped down before the impeachment vote."It is not a very good average," Sotero told Refinery29 from São Paulo. "There is something very wrong with the system and you have to reform it, otherwise we are going to continue to produce the type of politicians that we are producing today."But just what is going on in Brazil, and what happens next? Refinery29 breaks down what you need to know.