Brazil is bracing for a critical moment in its continuing political crisis amid fears that pro-government demonstrators gathering in cities across the country will clash with opponents.
Early on Friday morning police in São Paulo used water cannons in an attempt to clear anti-government protesters from Avenida Paulista, the city’s main thoroughfare, ahead of a march by government supporters and featuring former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Friday’s marches, in at least 45 cities across Brazil, will mark the government’s first show of force following a chaotic week of protests, corruption allegations and political meltdown.
“There is a possibility of conflict on the streets,” said Esther Solano, a professor of social sciences at the Federal University of São Paulo. “People are so angry that if there is any kind of provocation, it will be hard to avoid confrontation.”
In the most explosive development of the past week, the release by a judge of secretly recorded tapes revealing the private conversations of Lula and President Dilma Rousseff has fuelled the anger of both government supporters and opponents.
The move by Sergio Moro, the judge leading Operation Lava Jato, a massive anti-corruption investigation, has seen him hailed as a hero by some and damned as a coup-monger by others.
Both Lula and Rousseff have been implicated to varying degrees in the investigation or its offshoots, as have senior coalition allies and Aécio Neves, the leader of the main opposition party.
Rousseff’s decision to appoint Lula to her cabinet this week prompted widespread outrage among the opposition, which believes the move is designed to shield the former president from prosecution.
The fact that Lula’s appointment as chief of staff was subsequently blocked by a lower court judge has also enraged Rousseff loyalists, particularly when it emerged that the judge has a long and well-documented history of anti-government activism.
Such flagrant judicial bias is likely to animate Friday’s demonstrations. Along with trade unions and social movements that traditionally support the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the organisers hope to attract others who believe Brazil’s democracy is under threat.
Many of the pro-government supporters who gathered outside the presidential palace to cheer Lula’s swearing-in on Thursday said the main motivation for their presence was to defend Rousseff, their democratically elected president.
But many anti-government protesters have vowed to disrupt Friday’s marches. In São Paulo, opposition activists remain near Avenida Paulista. A note from the main anti-government protest groups circulating on Facebook on Friday has called for “all good citizens” to head to the area so as “not to permit these idolisers of corruption to make public spaces their fiefdoms”.
Late on Thursday night, as the protests outside the congress building in Brasília drew to a close, anti-government organisers told the 5,000-strong crowd to return the next day to challenge the petistas, as PT loyalists are known.
As the protesters gradually dispersed, a woman on top of a mobile sound system exhorted the crowd: “We must stay in the streets. We must keep up the pressure.”