Operation “Car Wash,” which began more than a year ago as an investigation into a bribes-for-contracts scheme at Petrobras, has exposed how widely corruption permeates Brazilian society, snaring top members of the Workers’ and other political parties, as well as executives of powerful construction companies. Polls show that two in three Brazilians support calls for her impeachment.
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Support for the protest movement remains widespread as rising unemployment and inflation presage the worst economic downturn since at least 1990.
Even in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s industrial and economic capital, where dissatisfaction with Rousseff has tended to run particularly high and protests in March and April drew thick crowds, turnout appeared significantly lower.
Brazilians frustrated with the corruption and incompetence they see as hallmarks of President Dilma Rousseff’s tenure filled streets around the country again on Sunday.
“I’m coming out to show my indignation”, said Mosack, 65, wearing the canary yellow jersey of Brazil’s national soccer team as he joined a sea of green and yellow along Sao Paulo’s midtown thoroughfare Avenida Paulista.
Political analysts here said that turnout at Sunday’s demonstrations could determine the protest movement’s future.
“We want things to change and if the people don’t go in the street that’s impossible,” said retired engineer Elino Alves de Moraes, 77, in Brasilia, calling for Rousseff and her “gang” to be “put in jail”.
With the political opposition divided and Congress in disarray, protesters had few proposals to rally around except for the removal of Rousseff.
Rousseff, who won re-election in a tight runoff last year, now has an approval rating of less than 10 percent.
Earlier this week, she and Senate President Renan Calheiros, who is also being investigated in the Petrobras affair, agreed to a market-pleasing package of reforms called the Brazil Agenda. They are expected to be a key indicator of public support for calls from some in Congress for President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment.
The deal takes Rousseff ever further from her socialist roots, but could help lure her right-wing opponents from the cliff edge by giving them a plausible reason to cooperate rather than impeach. However, anti-government protesters say Rouseff must have known about a corruption scandal in the state oil firm, Petrobras, as alleged bribery took place when she was head of the company.
Demonstrators also protest against Ms. Rousseff’s ruling Workers Party, in Porto Alegre.
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At the protest in Brasilia, demonstrators inflated an enormous caricature of the former president, once one of the world’s most popular politicians, in black and white prison garb with a ball and chain around his ankle.
