SAO PAULO: Supporters of embattled President Dilma Rousseff marched across Brazil on Wednesday protesting what they say is a “coup” aimed at toppling the leftist leader by impeachment.

“There will be no coup!” chanted thousands of marchers in downtown Sao Paulo, most of them wearing the red shirts of Rousseff’s Worker’s Party (PT).

Pro-government rallies, organized in part by Brazil’s powerful labor unions, were also held in other cities including Rio de Janeiro and the capital Brasilia.

“I’m here to protest the political aberration that is seeking to topple a democratically elected president,” said attorney Clarise De Almeida, 24, who waved a pro-Rousseff placard.

Any talk of “coup” raises the specter of Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, was imprisoned for two years and tortured during the dictatorship.

“It’s the elites that want to take power again,” added Vera Alice Demetrio, who was wrapped in a flag from Rousseff’s last campaign.

“I am a woman who has worked hard, I am an honest woman,” Rousseff said at a rally in Brasilia. “I will fight against the illegitimate interruption of my mandate,” she said.

Showing his support at the event was Uruguay’s popular former president Jose Mujica.

These are the first pro-government rallies since congressional lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha accepted an opposition request to impeach Rousseff on December 2.

The president is accused of budget maneuvers she says were long accepted by previous governments, but her opponents say are illegal.

Organizers said that nearly 300,000 people marched on Wednesday, though police said the number was closer to 50,000, the news site G1 reported.

For comparison, anti-government protests Sunday were sharply lower than the 2.5 million that marched against government corruption in mid-March: the crowds numbered 83,000 — according to police — and 407,000, according to protesters.

Rousseff, 68, has not even completed the first year of her second term in office and is facing an economy in recession, a fiscal deficit, double-digit inflation and growing unemployment.

Rating agency Fitch cut Brazil’s sovereign debt rating to junk status on Wednesday, the second downgrade for the world’s seventh economy.

Then there is the Petrobras scandal, which has rocked Brazil to its core.

Contractors working with the state-run oil giant — where Rousseff was once a senior manager — allegedly paid bribes to politically connected Petrobras executives in order to land contracts, and the money was then allegedly divvied up with politicians.