Democracy to the rescue?

WHEN Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, delivered a televised speech to mark International Women’s Day on March 8th, it was almost impossible to hear her in some districts. Thousands of middle-class Brazilians drowned her out by banging pots and pans, a traditional way to show dissent in neighbouring countries. Brazil’s panelaço is new.

Brazilians have plenty to grumble about, from a stagnant economy to fiscal austerity, but the pot-bangers’ main grievance is the scandal at Petrobras, a state-controlled oil giant. On March 6th a Supreme Court judge agreed to open investigations into 34 sitting politicians, including the speakers of both houses of Congress, whom a prosecutor suspects of participating in a multi-billion-dollar bribery scandal. All but two are allied with Ms Rousseff’s ruling coalition. She was not on the list, but she was Petrobras’s chairman in the mid-2000s, when much of the alleged corruption took place. On March 15th Brazilians plan rallies across the country to demand her impeachment.