Demonstrators took to the streets across Brazil on Sunday, protesting corruption and demanding the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
Her administration is struggling amid a weak economy and a massive corruption scandal involving the country’s state-run oil company.
“I love Brazil. I love my country. And I am tired of corruption. We are tired of corruption. It doesn’t matter which political party you are from, we are tired of being robbed,” a protester told CNN in Sao Paulo, where people packed the main Paulista Avenue.
In Rio de Janeiro, they gathered along Copacabana beach, while in the capital, Brasilia, protesters marched on government headquarters.
The mood was festive. Many demonstrators wore the country’s colors — green, blue and yellow — waved flags, and chanted: “Out Dilma.”
Before becoming the country’s first female president in 2011, Rousseff, from the Workers’ Party, was chief of staff to former President Lula da Silva. She won re-election in October, in one of the tightest races in recent years, but has since seen her approval rate plummet along with the economy.
Brazil is headed into recession again this year, inflation is up and the currency is at a 12-year low.
Also knocking her administration, investigators are unraveling a huge money laundering and bribery case centered around Petrobras, Brazil’s state-run oil company. Dozens of politicians, some in Rousseff’s party, are accused of accepting millions in payments.
The President has not been implicated in the investigation, but she was the Energy Minister and chairwoman of Petrobras during much of the time that the alleged corruption took place.
