BRASÍLIA: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pledged on Monday to hold talks with her growing number of critics and said her embattled government needed to show humility, a day after massive protests erupted across the country.
Rousseff was narrowly re-elected less than six months ago in a bitterly fought runoff but is already facing pressure to quit over a snowballing $3.8 billion graft scandal at state oil firm Petrobras which has dragged in her ruling coalition and seen calls for her to be impeached.
Her mounting woes include a badly faltering economy and on Sunday protests against her took place in major towns and cities across Brazil, laying bare the scale of public discontent.
Rousseff suffered a fresh blow Monday when a senior member of her ruling Workers' Party (PT) became one of the most high-profile public figures formally accused of corruption in the murky Petrobras graft case, which stretched back to a period when Rousseff chaired the company board.
In a closely watched speech in Brasilia, Rousseff said her underpressure government had to open "dialogue" with society and act with "humility."
She urged the country to unite and told parties across the political spectrum to pay attention to the rising anger on the streets, including agreeing a package of "wide-ranging political reform" which she intends to unveil in the crucial next few days.
Rousseff, a former guerrilla leader imprisoned and tortured under the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, added she was "committed to governing for 200 million Brazilians -- those who voted for me and those who did not."
Referring to the protest marches that drew more than a million onto the streets, she said: "Yesterday, when I saw hundreds of thousands of civilians demonstrating I could not help but think how it had been worth fighting for this freedom (from dictatorship)."
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