Braslia: Tens of thousands of Brazilians waving the red flags of the ruling Workers' Party demonstrated across the country against impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
The rallies were part of a concerted fight-back by the president, who is reeling in the face of impeachment proceedings for allegedly manipulating government accounts to disguise the depth of Brazil's recession during her 2014 reelection.
Further boosting Rousseff, her chief ally in the spiraling political crisis -- fiery ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- won a major court battle that removes him from the jurisdiction of a crusading anti-corruption judge.
The peaceful pro-Rousseff demonstrators gathered yesterday in 31 cities, including Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and northern centers like Recife. Although a reliable total estimate was not immediately available, at least 25,000 to 30,000 turned out in Brasilia alone, police said.
"No to the coup," said one placard popular at the protests. "Democracy," read a large banner at the gathering in Rio, which will host the Olympics in five months, where more than 5,000 people turned out.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil's financial powerhouse, Francisco Ranieri, 50, said he had taken to the streets "because now is the moment." "The opposition wants to push Dilma (Rousseff) from power to end the people's government," added Ranieri, a shopkeeper.
Lula, the hugely influential founder of the Workers' Party and pillar of Brazil's left, had been due to lead the Brasilia rally but cancelled at the last minute. His spokesman did not explain the change in plan. Just as protesters gathered, Lula won a significant court victory that could help boost Rousseff's cause.
Rousseff has been counting on the well-connected ex-president to reorganize her flailing administration and lead the fight against impeachment in Congress. But the leftist heavyweight's comeback has been derailed by corruption charges linked to a huge probe led by federal Judge Sergio Moro into a bribes and embezzlement scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued an interim ruling removing the politically explosive case from Moro and putting it with the high court -- a decision expected to give Lula considerable breathing space.
It was a rare victory for Rousseff whose chances of defeating impeachment are thought to have nosedived this week. She has dismissed the impeachment drive as a trumped up campaign that amounts to a slow coup.
On Wednesday, she told a group of artists and academics in Brasilia that the accounting tricks she's accused of using illegally were common practice in previous governments. "If I suffer impeachment, then it means that every previous government should have been impeached too, because all of them, without exception, did the same thing," she said. "I was always respecting the law."
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