Fresh anti-government protests in Brazil

Brazil on Sunday braced for more huge demonstrations against government corruption, just one month after more than a million people took to the streets to protest graft and economic drift.

A massive corruption scandal at state-owned oil giant Petrobras, rising inflation on the back of soaring utility bills and a perceived eroding of workers' rights have fueled opposition to leftist President Dilma Rousseff, re-elected just last October.

By early Sunday, some 50,000 people had already turned out at demonstrations that organizers said they hoped would draw more than one million people in around 400 cities across the continent-sized nation.

Rio was hosting two protests at the tourist magnet of Copacabana beach, while another march was scheduled for early afternoon in business hub Sao Paulo.

"We have come to show what is going on in Brazil -- this government is doing nothing. The people must show their unsatisfaction," Dianara Loubet, a 75-year-old yoga instructor, told AFP as marchers converged on the capital Brasilia, where some protesters hung a banner calling for the army to intervene.

Similar protests on March 15 brought out more than 1.7 million people according to police, although polling organization Datafolha questioned what it deemed inflated figures in Sao Paulo.

"The main objective is to get Rousseff's dismissal or resignation," Fabio Ostermann, a leader of an opposition party organizing the rally, said Saturday.

Public confidence in the political class has slumped with the detention or questioning of dozens of lawmakers and officials, including the treasurer of the ruling Workers Party over an alleged multi-billion dollar kickback scheme at Petrobras.

Rousseff is herself not under investigation, despite being a former Petrobras board chair, but the widening probe has fingered a swath of her party colleagues and allies.

A Datafolha poll Saturday found 63 percent of a 2,800-strong sample believed Rousseff should personally be investigated but 64 percent believed even if she were she would retain office.

The pollsters also found some eight in ten Brazilians believe Rousseff knew what was going on at Petrobras, which she vehemently denies.

Rousseff's personal ratings have crashed below 20 percent not just owing to the Petrobras affair but with Brazil's economy staggering after four years of paltry growth.

Fitch Ratings lowered the country's investment grade to negative last week and inflation has climbed to 8.13 percent -- almost double the government's central target.

Rousseff has responded with budget cuts, but promised to protect welfare programs that are the foundation of support for her party.