Brazil’s president takes on the task of ending the isolation of Bolsonaro’s legislature through rapprochement with the US, EU and China
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is convinced that all the decline that Brazil suffered during Jair Bolsonaro’s legislature must be remedied in a short time. Just yesterday, as soon as he was sworn in, he rescinded more than a dozen decrees signed by his predecessor to end, among other things, the 100-year-mandated secrecy of public administration documents and information, the operation of the Amazon Fund to combat deforestation and counter illegal mining or suspend the issuance of new gun ownership licenses.
It also approved urgent aid to needy families, tax exemptions on fuels or the privatization of public companies such as the Petrobras oil company or Correios Post. All measures aimed at solving the internal problems of a country that deems rescue necessary.
Wasting no time, he took on this Monday the task of rebuilding international relations to put Brazil back on the world stage after the secrecy of the Bolsonaro era, where the area was remarkably isolated from its neighbours. He took advantage of the presence of seventeen presidents and heads of state on the occasion of his inauguration to take the first steps in his foreign policy.
Lula hopes to gain the international support he received during his previous presidencies, between 2003 and 2010, when the world surrendered to an uneducated, middle-class trade unionist who managed to run the largest democracy in Latin America. At that time Lula was the undisputed leader of the region, with a balancing role between the different powers and the rise of the leftist tendency that the continent was experiencing.
“The eyes of the world are watching us. Our commitment will be with Mercosur and the rest of the sovereign nations of the region. We will have an active dialogue with the United States, the European Union and China. We will forge more alliances from now on to have more strength. Brazil must determine its destiny, it must be a sovereign country,” he said during his inaugural address to Congress.
To do this, he will be forced to undo much of what Bolsonaro did, who had no qualms about even attacking China, which receives 27% of all Brazilian exports. Lula’s inauguration was not attended by Xi Jinping, riled up by the complicated situation they are going through due to Covid-19, but his vice president, Wang Qisha, did attend.
Newly appointed foreign minister Mauro Vieira announced today that the president is preparing for a trip to China and the US in his first months in office. The White House has received Lula’s return with some suspicion, as he is a socialist-seeming president who could establish ties with Nicolás Maduro or the Cuban regime, and so decided to send a second-line delegation.
Ratification of the Free Trade Agreement with Mercosur, signed in 2019, is expected with the European Union and Lula is also expected to regain leadership in Latin America.
On the other hand, today the 37 ministers who will form Lula’s government took office. Under the motto “Unity and Reconstruction”, they must restore the country from the “abyss” into which, according to the president, it was plunged after the passage of Bolsonaro. The strongman of the economy will be Fernando Haddad, Secretary of the Treasury; while Mauro Vieira, a seasoned career diplomat, who served as Foreign Minister in Dilma Rousseff’s administration between 2014 and 2016, will be in charge of the Foreign Relations Department. The cabinet consists of 11 women and political leaders from 9 parties from a broad spectrum.
Lula and the King of Spain, Felipe VI, met this Monday on the first day of the new Brazilian president. «Now I received the greeting of King Felipe VI of Spain, who came to Brazil to accompany our inauguration. We talked about relations between Brazil and Spain, Europe and Latin America,” the ruler of the South American country said in a short message on his social networks.
The meeting with Don Felipe, which took place at the Itamaraty Palace, the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was also attended by the Spanish Vice President, Yolanda Díaz, and the European country’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares .
Ahead of the inauguration, the Spanish monarch said in a meeting with members of the region’s Hispanic community that he hopes “Brazil will play a very active international role”. Albares, for his part, indicated that “Lula has an agenda very compatible with that of the government of Spain”, based on “social equality, social justice, the defense of the environment and the belief in multilateralism”.
Source: La Verdad
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