Download A Million Call For Roussef Impeachment

Last updated: March 15, 2015 11:10 pm
A million call for Rousseff impeachment
Samantha Pearson and Aline Rocha in São Paulo
More than a million protesters took to the streets of Brazil on Sunday to call for the impeachment of President Dilma
Rousseff, as anger intensifies over increasing economic hardship and the multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at state
oil company Petrobras.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators swarmed around ministerial buildings in the capital Brasília,
along Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, and other major cities across at least 25 of Brazil’s 26
states. Over a million people protested in São Paulo alone — equivalent to one in 20 people in the
city’s greater metropolitan region, according to military police.
Families, the elderly and activist groups — many dressed in Brazil’s national green and yellow
colours — waved flags and balloons, held up banners against the government, and sung the
national anthem in what was largely a peaceful protest.
“Dilma and her PT party have taken away any pride I had in being Brazilian — I want to be proud
of my country again,” said Wagner Pugliese, the owner of a petrol station who held up a sign calling
for Ms Rousseff’s impeachment.
Others simply called for the end of corruption across all political parties. “I’m tired of corruption —
we’re all tired of paying high taxes and seeing no return for society,” said Cristina Araújo, a systems
analyst.
The demonstrations, which had been planned for weeks through social media and which were
expected to attract only a quarter of a million people, come only three months into Ms Rousseff’s
second term. While analysts say her impeachment is still unlikely, the protests will add to a climate
of political instability that has pushed Brazil’s currency to a 12-year low and make it even harder to
introduce the painful austerity measures needed to correct Brazil’s deteriorating fiscal situation.
“They will set the tone as to the level of popular discontent and mobilisations that Rousseff will
confront in the coming months,” said João Augusto de Castro Neves of Eurasia Group, a political
risk consultancy. “More important than [Sunday’s turnout] will be whether these protests lead to a
more sustained . . . movement, including that of organised labour,” he said, pointing to recent
strikes by truck drivers.
Three weeks ago, truck drivers set up roadblocks across a third of the country in protest over
higher fuel taxes among other costs, leaving supermarket shelves bare and disrupting soyabean
shipments. The government was forced to give into most of their demands.
“Episodes like these will only become more common as the fiscal adjustment hits the labour
market and threatens benefits to special interests,” said Mr Castro Neves.
After Brazil recorded its first primary budget deficit in more than a decade last year, Ms Rousseff
has tried to introduce tax and benefit cuts to correct the country’s fiscal policy and retain Brazil’s
prized investment grade credit rating. However, she has met tough resistance, not only among
ordinary Brazilians but also from coalition parties in Congress, which has been paralysed by
infighting over the corruption scandal at Petrobras.
Last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court announced it would investigate the speakers of both houses of
Congress and more than 30 other congressmen and senators — all but one of whom are from Ms
Rousseff’s ruling PT party and its coalition parties.
Prosecutors believe that for much of the past decade Petrobras executives and the country’s largest
construction companies conspired to cream billions of dollars off Petrobras contracts, part of
which was used to fund political parties. Ms Rousseff, who has denied any involvement in the
scheme, was chair of Petrobras when much of the alleged graft took place.
Brazilians are also outraged by poor public services and rising inflation, which hit the highest level
in a decade in February even as the country heads for another technical recession this year.
Many states are also struggling with water shortages and the possibility of energy rationing after
the country’s worst drought in 80 years.
Anger Bubbles Up Against
Brazilian President
By SIMON ROMEROMARCH 15, 2015
Protesters marched in Brazil on Sunday to express growing anger over claims that the national oil company Petrobras
channeled huge bribes from contractors to President Dilma Rousseff's 2010 election campaign.
Credit Felipe Dana/Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO — Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities across Brazil
on Sunday to express their ire at President Dilma Rousseff, raising pressure on her as she grapples
with an onslaught of challenges including an economy mired in stagnation, a sweeping bribery
scandal and a revolt by some of the most powerful figures in her governing coalition.
The protests, organized to coincide with commemorations of the re-establishment of democracy 30
years ago after a long military dictatorship, reflect rising disenchantment with Ms. Rousseff after
former executives at Petrobras, the national oil company, revealed an elaborate scheme in which
they said they channeled huge bribes from contractors to Ms. Rousseff’s 2010 election campaign, in
addition to enriching themselves and legislators supporting her.
The payoff racket coincided roughly with the period that Ms. Rousseff led the company’s board of
directors. While no testimony has surfaced claiming that she personally profited from the scheme,
calls for her impeachment have been growing louder. Political analysts and even some of Ms.
Rousseff’s chief political opponents view impeachment as a distant possibility. Yet with her approval
ratings falling sharply, Ms. Rousseff has seen her maneuvering room grow more limited to deal with
a range of urgent problems.
President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. Credit Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
Concerns are growing over a sluggish economy expected to contract this year as the boom of the
previous decade recedes into memory. Brazil’s once-strong currency, the real, has plunged 23
percent against the dollar this year as investors cut their exposure to the economy. Inflation has
climbed to its highest level in nearly a decade as job losses mount, partly as a result of the Petrobras
scandal rippling through the Brazilian oil industry, which has also been shaken by the worldwide
plunge in petroleum prices.
“If there was thievery all around her and they were looting Petrobras, then, yes, the president is
responsible,” said Joana Simões Lopes, 40, a fashion designer who was among the protesters in Rio
de Janeiro’s seaside Copacabana district. “She should resign simply out of shame.”
Pointing to rising polarization, some prominent supporters of Ms. Rousseff have begun calling
supporters of her ouster “golpistas,” or putschists, claiming the movement reflects dissatisfaction
among privileged Brazilians rather than broad-based discontent.
But in contrast to leaders elsewhere in the region who have responded to rising dissent by spewing
insults at their critics or cracking down with security forces, Ms. Rousseff has taken a relatively
nonconfrontational approach. While she has acknowledged the corruption at Petrobras, she
contends there is no basis for impeachment.
“In this country, we all have the right to protest,” Ms. Rousseff, 67, said in a video posted over the
weekend on her Facebook page in which she alluded to her past as a guerrilla who opposed the
dictatorship, which, she noted, harshly restricted civil liberties, including street demonstrations.
Still, the protests are focusing scrutiny on the steady erosion of support for Ms. Rousseff, an
economist by training who lacks the talent for political deal-making of her mentor and predecessor
as president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Raising fears about gridlock in Brazil’s Congress, Ms.
Rousseff is facing a dispute with the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, the large centrist party,
known as the PMDB, that anchors her coalition.
Leaders of the PMDB, who control both houses of Congress, are fuming after the Supreme Court
authorized investigations into claims that they received money from the Petrobras bribery scheme.
Blaming Ms. Rousseff for their predicament — the prosecutor general in her government is pursuing
the inquiry — they are threatening to block legislation aimed at bolstering unpopular austerity
measures.
Beyond the halls of power in the capital, Brasília, a public opinion survey by Datafolha, a Brazilian
polling company, showed Ms. Rousseff’s approval ratings declining to 23 percent from 42 percent at
the end of 2014. The poll, conducted in early February with interviews of 4,000 people, had a
margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Brazil’s diverse economy remains on a stronger footing than neighbors like Argentina and
Venezuela. A sense of crisis, however, is spreading through the political establishment, which
resents Ms. Rousseff’s top-down management style and questions her reluctance to acknowledge
that policies expanding the government’s role in the economy might have accentuated some of the
problems Brazil faces.
Some political analysts are drawing uneasy comparisons with the turbulent period in the early
1990s, when a corruption scandal moved Fernando Collor de Mello to resign as president in an
attempt to thwart his impeachment trial. (He was impeached anyway, shortly after he left office.)
Nearly every other civilian president since the 1980s has faced calls for impeachment, but rarely has
the momentum built as fast as it has for Ms. Rousseff.
“The protests are an attempt to untie one of the biggest knots of the crisis: the inability of the leastprepared president of the democratic era to deal with the most difficult process Brazil is facing in the
last 30 years,” said Fernando Gabeira, a respected writer and founder of Brazil’s Green Party.
Still, Ms. Rousseff and the governing Workers Party still command important bastions of support.
Many Brazilians who have climbed out of poverty in recent years, partly because of the government’s
social welfare programs, remain loyal to Ms. Rousseff, who narrowly won re-election last October.
“There is no evidence for removing Dilma from the presidency, so let her finish her term,” said Kelly
Molina Porto, 33, a street vendor who attended smaller protests on Friday here in support of the
president. “She was democratically elected.”
At the same time, others are saying they have had enough after witnessing the evolution of the leftist
Workers Party from an insurgent organization that criticized the rampant corruption in Brazil’s
political system into an establishment fixture, fending off accusations that it benefited from what
may be the largest bribery scandal in the country’s history.
“The economy is entirely for them, and they don’t care if this finishes with Brazil,” said Laerte Alves
Machado, 61, a civil engineer among the protesters in São Paulo, referring to the Workers Party.
“They just want to stay in power.”
15 March 2015 Last updated at 19:36 GMT
Thousands call for President Rousseff's impeachment
The biggest protest took place in Sao Paulo
More than a million Brazilians have joined demonstrations demanding President Dilma Rousseff's
impeachment. The protesters say the president must have known about a corruption scandal which has
engulfed Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras. The political opposition says much of the alleged
bribery took place when she was head of the company. But Ms Rousseff has been exonerated in an
investigation by the attorney general and denies involvement. Most of the politicians accused of taking
bribes in a kickback scheme come from the governing coalition.
'Coup attempt'
Protests have taken place across 22 Brazilian states and the federal capital, Brasilia. The largest
demonstration went ahead in Sao Paulo, attracting more than 500,000 people. Many of the protesters
waved Brazilian flags and wore the yellow shirts of the national football team. They shouted slogans
against corruption and the Workers' Party government.
In Rio de Janeiro, police said around 15,000 people had joined a protest there, while in Brasilia a crowd
of 40,000 was reported. "There's no point in complaining only on social media, we have to be here and
show that we are really fed up," businesswoman Daniela Mello told the AP news agency in Rio.
Friday saw supporters of President Rousseff out in force, with tens of thousands taking to the streets. Her
supporters say calls for an impeachment, less than five months after she was elected to a second four-year
term, amount to a coup attempt.
Opposition parties have backed Sunday's protests but have not openly called for impeachment of the
president, says the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo.
The Workers' Party has been in power since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his first
term in January 2003. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court approved the investigation of 54 people for
their alleged involvement in the kickback scheme.
The list was prepared by Attorney General Rodrigo Junot who alleged that private companies paid
corrupt officials in order to get lucrative Petrobras contracts.
According to the investigation, high-profile politicians also took a share of the money siphoned off from
the oil company.
Mr Junot's list includes Senate President Renan Calheiros, President of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo
Cunha, former Energy Minister Edison Lobao and former President Fernando Collor de Mello. All deny
corruption allegations.
Brazil: hundreds of thousands of
protesters call for Rouseff impeachment
Right-wing demonstrations across the country come amid frustration
over economy and corruption scandal at state oil company, Petrobras
Protesters against Brazil's president, Dilma Roussef, at Planalto, the office of the Brazilian leader in Brasilia.
Photograph: EPA
Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
Sunday 15 March 2015 17.41 GMT Last modified on Sunday 15 March 2015 18.33 GMT
Hundreds of thousands of predominantly white, middle-class Brazilians took to the streets on
Sunday to demand the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, with some also calling for a
military coup.
The right-wing demonstration comes amid growing frustration at the moribund economy, political
constipation and a huge corruption scandal at the state-run oil company, Petrobras.
Singing the national anthem, waving flags and chanting “Fora Dilma” (Dilma out!), between 10 and
20 thousand people marched along the seafront at Copacabana to insist on a change of government
barely five months after Rousseff was re-elected.
Police estimated the crowd in Rio de Janeiro at 15,000 by 11am, though it continued to grow. In
the capital Brasilia, 50,000 rallied in front of Congress. In Belo Horizonte, about 20,000 people
join the anti-government demonstration. Another 40,000 were reported on the streets in Ribeirão
Preto in São Paulo state. Altogether demonstrations took place in more than 60 cities, with the
overall turnout likely to exceed 200,000 people.
The nationalist tone was evident. In Rio, many wore the canary yellow jerseys of the national
football team or bore banners declaring outrage at a range of perceived national ills and policies
that they say have more in common with less stable and more radical left-wing government in
Latin America.
“Brazil does not want and will not be a new Venezuela,” read one. “Nation + Liberty = PT (Workers
Party) Out!” declared another.
There was a range of voices. While one flag extolled “Peace and Love”, a sizeable contingent of the
crowd expressed support for a return to the military dictatorship that ran the country between
1964 and 1985
“Army, Navy and Air Force. Please save us once again of (sic) communism” read one banner in
English. Among those holding it was computer graphic designer Marlon Aymes who said military
force was the only way to unseat the Workers Party.
“They are in power for 16 years. That is like a dictatorship,” he said. “In 1964 the military of Brazil
took a stand against a president who was close to the Kremlin. Today, the PT is in a group that
wants a Bolivarian socialist model across Latin America. Common people are protesting and
calling for impeachment, but congress is too corrupt to approve that so we need military
intervention.”
Opposition leader Aécio Neves lost by a narrow margin in October, but many of those who voted
for him and turned out on Sunday were unwilling to wait another four years for another chance to
change the government at the ballot booth.
Many expressed support for a more radical right-wing politician, Jair Bolsonaro, who is a military
reservist and has defended the dictatorship era. Although he has upset many with homophobic and
sexist comments he won more votes in Rio than any other congressman last year.
“We need another president, maybe Bolsonaro. He is close to the armed forces and he is the only
one who speaks out,” said Anna Mario Aracejo, an art teacher who was carrying a sign urging the
use of armed force to “liberate Brazil from corrupt politicians, parties and traitors of the nation.”
Bolsonaro’s son Flávio, also a politician, was embraced by many in the crowd. “This is a country
without options, with high taxes and poor government,” he told the Guardian. “We don’t want a
coup, but the government must respect the constitution.”
There were other, more moderate, views. Henrique Figueirdeo, a 23-year-old students of
administration, said: “I don’t want a return to dictatorship. We need progressive politics and we
need democracy. But we also need to tackle corruption and improve efficiency. For that we need a
change of government.”
Some called for more internet freedom and lower taxes. Many said they were marching because of
the Petrobras scandal, which has seen 57 politicians, including former president Fernando Collor
de Mello, investigated for kick-backs worth at least $3bn (£2.03bn). Rousseff is not under
investigation but as a former chair of Petrobras during the period when much of the corruption
took place, she has struggled to avoid being tainted by a scandal that has implicated allies and
opponents alike.
Although all the major parties have been dragged into the mire, the demonstrators were collecting
signatures calling for the impeachment of Rousseff.
“It’s unbelievable. They aren’t politicians. They are criminals,” said India Longras, who beat a
frying pan painted with “Fora Dilma” (Dilma Out!). “I was born in the military dictatorship. It was
a lot better than now. If I had to choose between then and now, I’d choose dictatorship. Education
was better, crime was low and the poor lived with dignity.”
Sunday’s protests were the biggest in Brazil since 2013, but the profile and politics of the
participants were very different. The Confederations Cup demonstrations two years ago had their
origins in a campaign to secure free public transport and spread rapidly particularly among the
young, via social networks after police violence inflamed public opinion.The latest wave of protests,
however, is from an older, whiter, more affluent demographic, following widespread advance
coverage by the mainstream media.
Anticipating this, the Workers Party organised a rally last Friday in support of the government and
state control of Petrobras, but there were less than a thousand people at their main demonstration
in central Rio.
Protesters demand President's ouster
in Brazil, decry corruption
By Barbara Arvanitidis and Dana Ford, CNN
March 16, 2015
President Dilma Rousseff won re-election in October in one of the tightest races in recent years.
Sao Paulo, Brazil (CNN) 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.
3/11/2015
Why Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff Is Failing
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff
(PHOTO: Ueslei Marcelino/REUTERS)
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is not someone who appreciates criticism. She is, by her own words, “a
harsh woman, sometimes surrounded by mild men.” What many foreigners don’t know is that Rousseff spent
three years behind bars in the early 1970s for fighting against Brazil’s dictatorship, a time during which she
was repeatedly tortured by interrogators with electric shock to her feet and ears, and forced into the “pau de
arara,” or parrot’s perch, a beam from which she was hung upside down naked, with bound wrists and
ankles.
Rousseff went through all of that for an ideal — her love and confidence in Brazil — and also for believing
that those in charge of the country at the time were damaging its future. But love and conviction have never
protected anyone against the inconstancy of fate. So today Rousseff has found herself in a position where
her actions, decisions and independent judgments are damaging the nation for which she so courageously
fought almost five decades ago.
As it’s been widely reported, Brazil is facing many challenges right now. The economy has stalled, inflation
hit the highest level in nearly ten years and the Brazilian Real is now the second worst-performing currency in
the world, after Ukraine’s Hryvnia. Rousseff’s failure to adjust public accounts and meet fiscal targets has
created a scenario in which a process of a strong recovery is unthinkable in the near future. Acording to
Gavekal Dragonomics, an independent research firm in China, the worst is yet to come; it predicts that
Brazil’s GDP will contract this year between -1% and -2% and again next year, in what could be the first time
since the 1929-1930 biennium that the country’s economy faced a recession for two consecutive years.
That is an even more chaotic scenario than the one predicted by analysts recently polled by the Central
Bank, who have foreseen a zero GDP growth rate this year, while for the next three years the numbers
continue to be revised downwards. To many, the situation has hit a crisis stage, even after the
announcement of a new economic team in November, in addition to the promises of cuts in social benefits,
budget and public spending. That wasn’t enough to calm things down. Not surprisingly, a survey published
earlier last month showed that the worsening economic scenario is one of the main reasons for Rousseff’s
approval ratings dropping to the worst of any Brazilian president since 1999.
While Rousseff’s predecessor Luis Inacio Lula da Silva managed to surf the wave of the commodities slump,
under Rousseff’s leadership the economy barely added jobs in 2014. Manufacturing employment has fallen
3.2% last year, while industrial output was down 3.5% over the 12 months ending January 31, the worst
performance since January 2010. Investments, consumption and exports — the pillars that supported Brazil
in recent years — are deteriorating sharply.
Export numbers are heading south, the trade balance is in deficit. The water crisis, in spite of the recent
rains, is still a problem to be tackled. Even with the weak energy demand in the industrial sector, Brazilians
are now facing a possible blackout in the dry months. And that’s without mentioning the multi-billion dollar
corruption scheme within the walls of oil giant Petrobras Petrobras, which deepens day by day and now
jeopardizes other sectors of the oil industry.
Rousseff’s choice to appoint Aldemir Bendine, the controversial president of state-controlled Banco do Brasil,
to be the new CEO of crisis-stricken Petrobras simply because he is one of her loyal lieutenants and not due
to his expertise in the oil industry, which he obviously lacks, resulted in a 7% drop in the shares of the
company in a single day last month, since government interference in the Brazil’s energy sector is blamed by
many investors for Petrobras’ poor performance.