Rio de Janeiro, Dec 13 (EFE).- Thousands of people participated in protests Sunday in more than 100 cities across Brazil, demanding an end to the administration of President Dilma Rousseff, who faces impeachment in the lower house of Congress.

One of the biggest protests took place in Brasilia, the country’s capital, where about 5,000 people, according to police estimates, gathered in front of Congress.

Protesters, the majority of them dressed in yellow, pulled a huge effigy of Rousseff and chanted “Out Dilma!”

In Rio de Janeiro, where the demonstration was staged on famous Copacabana beach, the operators of trucks equipped with loudspeakers urged on the protesters and chanted slogans calling for Rousseff, who was re-elected in 2014, to be removed from office.

Protesters in Sao Paulo gathered on Avenida Paulista, one of the main thoroughfares in Brazil’s largest city, and a truck belonging to the Nationalist Democratic Union, or UND, played military hymns and a message calling for a “constitutional military intervention.”

The protests were organized by the non-partisan Vem pra Rua and Movimento Brasil Livre grassroots organizations, among others.

The groups organized the protests at the last minute and did not expect a large turnout like in April and August, when millions of people took to the streets in cities across Brazil to protest corruption and the economic downturn.

Organizers, however, said Sunday’s demonstrations were a way of preparing for future protests.

Last week, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court issued an injunction preventing the lower house of Congress from completing the appointment of a committee to weigh Rousseff’s impeachment.

Lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha, a Rousseff foe, authorized the opening of impeachment proceedings against the president earlier this month for allegedly resorting to irregular accounting maneuvers aimed at disguising the size of the budget deficit. EFE