Almost million of Brazilians protest rising prices, corruption

PanARMENIAN.Net - Close to a million demonstrators marched in cities and towns across Brazil on Sunday, March 15, to protest a sluggish economy, rising prices and corruption - and to call for the impeachment of left-wing President Dilma Rousseff, according to Reuters.

The protests in the continent-sized country come as Brazilstruggles to overcome economic and political malaise and pick up the pieces of a boom that crumbled about the time Rousseff took office in 2011.

Rousseff, now early into her second four-year term, is unlikely to face the impeachment proceedings called for by many opponents. A fifth year of economic stagnation and a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at state-run energy company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras, has fueled their anger, Reuters says.

In a press conference Sunday night, two members of Rousseff's cabinet recognized the rights of protesters, but downplayed the importance of the demonstrations, saying they were expressions of discontent by those defeated at the polls.

They also sought to discredit those who suggest impeachment. Miguel Rossetto, one of Rousseff's top aides, criticized what he called the "intolerance" of those opponents and likened their demands to coup efforts. In a statement posted online Sunday, Aecio Neves, a centrist who was defeated by Rousseff in October, said the demonstrations marked a day when Brazilians "went to the streets to reunite with their virtues, their values and also with their dreams."

Sunday's gatherings were mostly calm, with little of the violence that tarnished a wave of massive demonstrations in 2013, when Brazilians protested billions of dollars of spending, even as the economy faltered, to host the 2014 World Cup.

In Sao Paulo alone, state police in late afternoon said that a million had turned out to march along skyscraper-lined Avenida Paulista, the heart of Brazil's financial capital and biggest city. A private pollster later said it was only 210,000.

Earlier, more than 10,000 residents of Rio de Janeiro poured onto the Copacabana waterfront. Most dressed in the blue, green and yellow of Brazil's flag. Crowds sang the national anthem and shouted "Dilma, out!"