More than half a million Brazilians took to the streets on Sunday to protest against corruption, demand the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and, in some cases, to call for a military coup.

The rightwing demonstration comes amid growing frustration at the moribund economy, political constipation and a huge bribery scandal at the state-run oil company, Petrobras.

Singing the national anthem, waving flags and chanting “Fora Dilma” (“Dilma out”), between 10 and 20 thousand predominantly white, middle class people marched along the seafront at Copacabana to insist on a change of government barely five months after Rousseff was re-elected.

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Police estimated the crowd in Rio de Janeiro at 25,000. In the centre of São Paulo, ten times that number joined a rally on Avenida Paulista, according to the Datafolha polling agency. In the capital, Brasilia, 40,000 rallied in front of Congress. In both Belo Horizonte and Belem, about 20,000 people joined the anti-government demonstrations . Another 40,000 were reported on the streets in Ribeirão Preto in São Paulo state and 100,000 in Porto Alegre.



Altogether demonstrations took place in more than 60 cities, also including Recife, Salvador, Manaus and Fortaleza with the overall turnout likely to exceed 500,000. Local media and police reported a total of more than a million people, though their figures were based on a four-times higher estimates of the crowd in São Paulo.

In Rio, many wore the canary yellow jerseys of the national football team or bore banners declaring outrage at a range of perceived national ills and policies that they say have more in common with less stable and more radical leftwing government in Latin America.



“Brazil does not want and will not be a new Venezuela,” read one. “Nation + Liberty = PT (Workers Party) Out!” declared another.

There was a range of voices. While one flag extolled “Peace and Love”, a sizeable contingent of the crowd expressed support for a return to the military dictatorship that ran the country between 1964 and 1985

“Army, Navy and Air Force. Please save us once again of [sic] communism” read one banner in English. Among those holding it was computer graphic designer Marlon Aymes who said military force was the only way to unseat the Workers Party.

“They are in power for 16 years. That is like a dictatorship,” he said. “In 1964 the military of Brazil took a stand against a president who was close to the Kremlin. Today, the PT is in a group that wants a Bolivarian socialist model across Latin America. Common people are protesting and calling for impeachment, but congress is too corrupt to approve that so we need military intervention.”

More moderate views were expressed by another demonstrator, Henrique Figueirdeo, a 23-year-old student of administration. “I don’t want a return to dictatorship. We need progressive politics and we need democracy. But we also need to tackle corruption and improve efficiency. For that we need a change of government.”

Rousseff said she supported the protesters’ rights to march and expressed hope that the rallies, which mark the 30th anniversary of the end of military rule, would demonstrate Brazil’s “democratic maturity”.

Opposition leader Aécio Neves, who lost by a narrow margin in October, said the protesters “went to the streets to reunite with their virtues, their values and also with their dreams”.

Many expressed support for a more radical rightwing politician, Jair Bolsonaro, who is a military reservist and has defended the dictatorship era. Although he has upset many with homophobic and sexist comments he won more votes in Rio than any other congressman last year.

“We need another president, maybe Bolsonaro. He is close to the armed forces and he is the only one who speaks out,” said Anna Mario Aracejo, an art teacher who was carrying a sign urging the use of armed force to “liberate Brazil from corrupt politicians, parties and traitors of the nation.”

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Bolsonaro’s son Flávio, also a politician, was embraced by many in the crowd. “This is a country without options, with high taxes and poor government,” he told the Guardian. “We don’t want a coup, but the government must respect the constitution.”

Some called for more internet freedom and lower taxes. Others complained at the weak economy, which is forecast to sink into recession this year, and the decade-high inflation of 7.7%.

Many said they were marching because of the Petrobras scandal, which has seen 57 politicians, including former president Fernando Collor de Mello, investigated for kick-backs worth at least $3bn (£2.03bn). Rousseff is not under investigation but as a former chair of Petrobras during the period when much of the corruption took place, she has struggled to avoid being tainted by a scandal that has implicated allies and opponents alike.

Although all the major parties have been dragged into the mire, most of those implicated are from the ruling coalition and the demonstrators were collecting signatures calling for the impeachment of Rousseff.

“It’s unbelievable. They aren’t politicians. They are criminals,” said India Longras, who beat a frying pan painted with “Fora Dilma”. “I was born in the military dictatorship. It was a lot better than now. If I had to choose between then and now, I’d choose dictatorship. Education was better, crime was low and the poor lived with dignity.”

Calls for a military coup were less evident at the bigger rallies in São Paulo and Brasilia. Sunday’s protests were the biggest in Brazil since 2013, but the profile and politics of the participants were very different and they passed more peacefully. The Confederations Cup demonstrations two years ago had their origins in a campaign to secure free public transport and spread rapidly particularly among the young, via social networks after police violence inflamed public opinion. The latest wave of protests, however, is from an older, whiter, more affluent demographic, following widespread advance coverage by the mainstream media.

Anticipating this, the Workers Party organised a rally last Friday in support of the government and state control of Petrobras, but there were less than a thousand people at their main demonstration in central Rio.

• The headline on this article, and a picture caption, were amended on 16 March 2015 to correct misspellings of Rousseff’s name.