Hundreds of artists and activists gathered along Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach Sunday to demand the resignation of President Michel Temer and to ask for Congress to approve a call for new elections. Temer is under investigation for bribery, after a whistleblower’s testimony alleging that he paid the former House Leader hush money leaked to one of the country’s biggest newspapers.
“We cannot allow Temer to continue to govern or allow our Congress to choose his substitute,” an activist speaker said, addressing the crowd on a crackling microphone from a sound truck. “When our grandkids ask us where we were during this time, we will say we were on the beach, listening to good music and fighting for our country’s democracy.”
The protest comes more than a week after allegations of corruption and bribery rocked Temer’s government. Leaked testimony from whistleblower Joesley Batista suggested that the President may have been involved in a kickback scheme to bribe former house leader Eduardo Cunha, who was stripped of his congressional seat and arrested last year in connection to a sweeping graft probe, dubbed “Operation Car Wash.”
Many of the country’s top political parties, politicians and business leaders have been implicated in the probe, which began in Brasilia more than three years ago. Since then, Federal Police and prosecutors have brought charges against hundreds of the country’s most powerful public figures. Read more at CNN.
{Matzav}
