The impeachment process against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has been thrown into doubt.
The acting Speaker of Brazil’s lower house, Waldir Maranhao, has annulled a vote in the lower house on April 17 that allowed the proceedings to go on to the Senate.
The Senate was scheduled to vote on whether to start an impeachment trial on Wednesday.
It is not currently clear if that vote will now happen.
But the president of the Senate impeachment commission (in Portuguese) said the vote would take place as scheduled.
In his decision, Maranhao said there had been irregularities during the lower house session in which its members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the impeachment process going ahead.
He said members of the lower house should not have publicly announced what their position was prior to the vote, and that it had been wrong of party leaders to instruct their members how to vote.
Maranhao called for a new vote in the lower house, but it is not yet clear whether the senate will agree to return the proceedings to the lower house.
It is also not known whether Maranhao’s decision can be overruled.
Maranhao, who opposed the impeachment process in the April 17 vote, only took over as the Speaker of the lower house last week, after the previous Speaker, Eduardo Cunha, was suspended, reports the BBC
Cunha, an outspoken critic of President Rousseff, led the impeachment drive against her.
Reacting to the news, Ms Rousseff urged “caution”, adding that there was a “hard fight ahead”.
The BBC’s South America business correspondent, Daniel Gallas, says it is unlikely that the 367 members of the house who voted in favour of the impeachment process – many of whom gave impassioned speeches before casting their votes – will change their minds.
Ms Rousseff has said the efforts to impeach her amount to “a coup attempt”.
She has accused Cunha and Vice-President Michel Temer of being the “ringleaders of the coup”.
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