Rio de Janeiro: Demonstrators gathered across Brazil on Sunday to call for the resignation or removal of President Michel Temer who is implicated in a widening corruption scandal that is undermining his government's fragile efforts to end a historic recession.
Scattered demonstrations, manly by supporters of ousted president Dilma Rousseff, took place in cities including Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where hundreds of demonstrators marched along the shoreline, chanting and waving banners reading "Temer out".
The protests were small, however, compared with massive marches in recent years as fortunes flagged in Latin America's biggest country, including 2016 demonstrations that built support for the leftist Rousseff's impeachment.
Brazilians were shocked by a recording disclosed last week that appeared to show Temer condoning the payment of hush money to a lawmaker jailed in a corruption probe that has ensnared dozens of politicians and executives in the last three years.
The revelations eroded what appeared to have been sufficient political support for Temer's measures to spur economic recovery, including overhauls to Brazil's labor and social security regulations.
"This could keep costing Brazil the stability and reforms it needs to encourage investment and growth," said Carlos Melo, a political scientist at Insper, a Sao Paulo business school, noting the massive sell-off of Brazilian assets in stock and currency markets last week.
"Confidence comes with expectations of progress," he added. "That is something that is quickly vanishing because Temer has lost at least the appearance of being beyond the scandals."
Temer on Saturday sought to reassure Brazilians with a fierce denial that he had condoned or committed any crimes.
Instead, he accused Joesley Batista, chairman of meat-packing giant JBS of manipulating a recorded conversation with Temer that is central to a plea agreement between prosecutors and JBS executives over illegal payments to politicians including the president and his two predecessors.
Batista is reportedly safely in New York after having struck the plea bargain in a sprawling corruption investigation that handed the president and a presidential hopeful, Aecio Neves, to prosecutors.
But few in Brazil appeared reassured, with one allied political party saying on Saturday that it would no longer support Temer's conservative government and another saying it would consider doing the same.
The Brazilian Bar Association, known as the OAB, said it would join the ranks of those filing impeachment motions against Temer in Congress, arguing that the recording, if proven to be accurate, showed a dereliction of presidential duties to uphold the law.
"There is a legal duty to act in accordance with the office," wrote Flavio Pansieri, one of the association's lawyers in a statement.
As many as eight formal requests for impeachment have been tabled since the scandal broke on Wednesday evening local time.
Reuters