Millions of Brazilians were glued to their televisions on April 17, waiting for the results of the Congress’s impeachment vote. They came through late: the 513-seat lower house of Congress voted 367 to 137 in favor of impeachment charges against President Dilma Rousseff. The Senate is expected to vote to formally open the impeachment trial and prompt Rousseff’s suspension as president on May 11.

For a moment it seemed the vote in the Senate might be canceled. On May 9, seemingly out of nowhere, Waldir Maranhão, a member of Congress for the center-right Partido Progressista (Progressive Party, PP), and interim president of the lower house since last Thursday, suspended the impeachment process, citing at least four procedural irregularities in the voting process of April 17. Maranhão insisted that the Senate cease its proceedings on the matter and send it back to the lower house for further deliberations.

Having none of this, the president of the Senate, Renán Calheiro, called Maranhão’s decision an “anti-democratic idiocy” and announced that the process would proceed in the Senate as scheduled.