Politics
Demonstrators shouting "Out with Dilma" gathered in over 100 cities on Sunday in the second major protest this year. Reuters reports that while the crowds shrank significantly from around a million protesters on March 15, organizers said the dozens of major demonstrations in every corner of Brazil showed the extent of anti-government sentiment that has taken hold in the country. Three quarters of Brazilians support the protests, according to a Datafolha poll released on Saturday. "Out with Dilma" was the recurring chant at the peaceful, almost festive protests, and that sentiment united the handful of loosely associated groups organizing the events. But views differed widely on what their rallying cry meant.
According to the New York Times, With Brazil’s economy eking out growth of just 0.1 percent in 2014 and expected to contract this year, Ms. Rousseff is facing indignation over rising unemployment and high inflation. Sixty-three percent of Brazilians believe she should face impeachment proceedings, according to a public opinion survey released over the weekend by Datafolha, a Brazilian polling company.
But in a sign of the confusion in the country over pursuing such a path, fewer than 15 percent of those favoring impeachment knew that it would be Michel Temer, the vice president from the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, who could take over if Ms. Rousseff were impeached. Offering some hope to Ms. Rousseff, her approval ratings have stopped plunging, though they remain at just 13 percent, according to the poll. The survey, conducted on April 9 and 10 in interviews with 2,834 people, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points.
