Dilma Rousseff loses control of Brazil’s streets to middle classes

Though they have become increasingly common in recent years, gauging the size of public protests in Brazil remains an inexact science.

Take the biggest of Sunday’s anti-government demonstrations held in more than 230 cities across the country, the monster rally in Sao Paulo. Police put turnout at 1.4 million people. Datafolha, a respected polling agency, came up with a more modest total of 500,000.

Nationwide there may have been more than three million people on the streets demanding the removal of president Dilma Rousseff from office, though given the total was arrived at using police data it may have been somewhat less.

But whatever the actual number, the scale of Sunday's protests was unprecedented and underlined the level of public anger at Rousseff's ruling Workers' Party as evidence mounts that it ran a massive corruption scheme inside the state-controlled oil giant Petrobras.

“They have increased the probability that Dilma will be forced out,” says André Pereira César, a political analyst in Brasilia. “We knew they would be big but when you see the images of the sea of people who turned out it creates a very strong impression in a climate where the government is already very weak.”

Darkening prospects

Underlining the president’s darkening prospects for the first time, Sunday saw large turnouts in cities considered friendly to the Workers’ Party. In contrast to a wave of protests a year ago, there were big rallies in state capitals in the north and northeast of the country, the bedrock of Rousseff’s support when winning re-election in 2014.

“The difference between now and a year ago is the state of the economy. It is much worse and ordinary citizens are blaming what they see as an incompetent government,” notes César.

Meanwhile demonstrations called in support of Rousseff and her predecessor and mentor, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, formally charged with corruption last week, only succeeded in attracting a few thousand people.

The Workers’ Party, with its proud history of militant mobilisation, has lost control of the Brazilian street to the middle class. It is highly likely that a rally it will hold Friday in support of Lula, now facing arrest, will only underline this shift in the balance of power.

The size and extent of Sunday’s protests come at a politically disastrous moment for Rousseff who on Friday was forced to deny reports she was resigned to losing power. The public display of anger strengthens the hand of her opponents just as congress is scheduled to restart its debate on a motion to impeach her for breaking fiscal responsibility laws.

Even before Sunday’s mass show of discontent Rousseff’s main coalition partner, the Democratic Movement of Brazil, signalled at a party conference on Saturday that it is preparing to abandon her administration within a month.

Her one remaining ally in the party’s hierarchy, senate president Renan Calheiros, has suggested leaving her in office but formally stripping her of her power and shifting the country from a presidential to parliamentary system.

Damaging evidence

Meanwhile the undisputed hero of Sunday’s protests, Sérgio Moro, the federal judge whose investigation into political corruption at state-controlled oil giant Petrobras is the root cause of the present crisis, is working away with the likelihood he will turn up more damaging evidence against the Workers’ Party.

Having already sentenced executives from Brazil’s biggest construction companies to long stretches in prison for their roles in the Petrobras affair, his team is reportedly now negotiating plea bargain agreements with them.

The deal on offer is a simple one. In order to see their sentences reduced they must provide verifiable evidence of their illicit dealings with politicians. That would increase the risk of Rousseff having her mandate cancelled by electoral authorities if, as rumoured, the executives reveal how they helped illegally bankroll her re-election campaign.

But they might also provide further details of evidence of wrongdoing by Brazil’s opposition whose two main leaders were insulted when they made an appearance at the demonstration in Sao Paulo. Though Rousseff’s ousting has moved closer with Sunday’s protests, there is no guarantee such a move would end Brazil’s deepening political crisis.