Thousands of Brazilians protest planned constitutional reform

Thousands of people have poured into the streets of Brazil’s largest city of Sao Paulo to protest a government plan that would set caps on public spending over the next two decades.

The demonstrators, who had gathered on a main avenue in Sao Paulo on Sunday, denounced the proposal by the government of President Michel Temer and demanded its immediate reversal.

The critics of the measure argue that education and health will be badly hit by the proposal, which was passed in the lower house of Congress as in October and now sits before the Senate.

Some of the protesters in the Sunday rally referred to the manner in which Temer took over power — not by popular vote but after the previous president was ousted for impeachment — and said he had not received a popular mandate to enforce large-scale reforms.

Temer was former president Dilma Rousseff’s vice president before becoming her sworn enemy when she faced a scandal. Rousseff was removed from office earlier this year to undergo impeachment. Temer then took over to serve the remainder of her tenure.

Since then, Temer, too, has faced allegations of corruption at the government level, and numerous members of his cabinet have resigned. He lost a fourth cabinet minister to corruption allegations on Friday.

Brazil’s President Michel Temer (photo by AFP)

A new scandal, however, is said to directly involve the president himself.

The protestefrs on Sunday expressed outrage over the new scandal, which revolves around rumors that Temer abused his power to do a personal favor to one of his cabinet ministers. They demanded Temer’s removal from office.

Brazillian National Students’ Union President Carina Vitral said that people wanted to “bring down this illegitimate government,” adding that the recent round of ministerial resignations proved that the impeachment of Rousseff  was “not about ending corruption, but about putting an end on investigations and maintaining things as they were.”