BRASILIA — Brazil is on the verge of a historic impeachment vote in its National Congress that could oust Dilma Rousseff, the president of South America’s most populous country.

If two-thirds of lawmakers in the lower house opt for an impeachment trial in a vote that starts at 1 p.m. Sunday, and the upper house later endorses the decision by a majority, the leader of the world’s fourth-biggest democracy will be suspended for 180 days and replaced by her vice president, Michel Temer.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff gives a thumbs-up during an event at the presidential palace in Brasilia. The Associated Press

A trial in the Federal Senate – which could happen while Rio de Janeiro stages South America’s first Olympics in August – will follow. But by then, Rousseff’s presidency may well be over.

The country is looking nervously over the brink, divided over its future and the legality of the process that Rousseff and her supporters say is an institutional coup and an attack on Brazil’s young democracy.

Brazil’s two-decade military dictatorship ended in 1985, and it has already impeached one president, Fernando Collor de Mello-, in 1992. But his impeachment on corruption grounds was widely supported, and Brazil is split over Rousseff’s fate.

Pro- and anti-impeachment protesters are camped out in Brasilia and a metal barrier has been erected outside Congress to keep them apart. Inside, politicians are fighting a last-minute battle to persuade a dwindling group of deputies to make up their minds.

On Friday afternoon, the pro-impeachment camp said they had enough votes to win. Hours later, the government had turned some deputies back in their favor and was claiming it could survive.

“Let’s add up the no’s, the abstentions and the absences,” said Afonso Florence, leader of the Workers’ Party caucus in the lower house.

Rousseff, who was narrowly re-elected in 2014, is accused of breaking a responsibility law in using state bank funds and accounting trickery to cover gaps in her budget. She denies the allegations.

Hanging over the process is an enormous corruption scandal involving billions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks at state-run oil company Petrobras, which has entangled lawmakers and officials from her own Workers’ Party and its coalition allies. Last month, her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was taken in for questioning in connection with the inquiry.

Politically, if not legally, this is as much a part of the impeachment process as the accusations over fiscal irregularities.

The scandal has prompted mass street protests across Brazil over the past year calling for Rousseff and Lula to be jailed. In polls, a majority of Brazilians support her ouster.

To confound her problems, Brazil is swamped by its worst economic recession in decades. In Congress, key parties in Rousseff’s ruling coalition have progressively abandoned ship.

Temer, who Rousseff accuses of conspiring against her, has been holding talks with queues of politicians at his official residence, the Jaburu Palace. Pro-impeachment deputy Levy Fidelix said there were about 40 lawmakers waiting when he jumped the queue there last Wednesday. Lula has also been hosting negotiations with lawmakers in a luxury hotel near Congress. “It’s a war of up and down. It’s like the stock exchange,” he told supporters in Brasilia on Saturday.

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