On a platform covered with red carnations and with one of them on his lapel, the veteran fighter and president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, evoked this Tuesday morning before the Portuguese Parliament what it meant for the opposition to the dictatorship Brazilian the Portuguese revolution of 49 years ago.
The Brazilian leader took advantage of the great anniversary to recall that the insurrection marked the end of the Portuguese empire, after the colonial war bled the autocratic regime dry. Alluding to the war in Ukraine, the Brazilian president maintained that this example “shows us that an armed policy that confronts a people in struggle for freedom will never be able to win.” And, although he condemned the violation of “Ukrainian territorial integrity”, he again distanced himself from NATO and the EU, albeit gently, advocating “political negotiation and dialogue”.
After obtaining exoneration from the corruption process that kept him imprisoned for 580 days in Curitiba and obtaining electoral acquittal with his victory over his predecessor as head of state, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, Lula da Silva undertakes his rehabilitation phase as a world leader , with visits like the ones he already made to Argentina or China and tomorrow to Madrid.
Before, he spent three days in Portugal, remarking that “Brazil has returned”, to indicate the recovery of full connection with the old metropolis, after the cooling off of the previous stage. In his speeches on Portuguese soil, he stressed that Portugal represents the gate to Europe for Brazil.
However, this strategic bet faces the obstacle of the clear divergences between the Government of Brasilia and those of the European Union, such as the one in Lisbon, which became clear a little over a week ago in Lula’s strong criticism of the United States. and the EU for helping to prolong the war by arming Ukraine. In the days that followed, the Brazilian president gradually qualified his words, with that standoff from Russia in rejecting the violation of Ukrainian “territorial integrity.”
These days in Portugal, since the joint declaration with the Portuguese Government on the first day of the visit, he put on the suit of “Lulinha love and peace”, the slogan of his 2002 campaign, with which he tried to overcome his fierce image of metallurgical union leader, imprisoned by the dictatorship.
That Lula was the one who proclaimed this Tuesday morning that “it is necessary to admit that the war cannot continue indefinitely. Every day that the fighting continues, human suffering, loss of life and destruction of houses increases.†But also in a line of reconciliation he considered that “the integration of the European Union is a democratic patrimony of humanity.”
However, Lula does not give up on his bid to form a group of countries that will put Russia and Ukraine to negotiate, in order to avoid the indefinite prolongation of the war. “No solution to any national and international conflict will last if it is not based on dialogue and political negotiation,” concluded the Brazilian president.
The high-voltage day that was expected with Lula’s intervention in the commemoration of April 25, although in a special parliamentary plenary session prior to the solemn session, did not reach a tremendous dimension. There were far-right protesters in front of Parliament, saying that the place of the “thief” is the prison, thus demanding Lula’s return to jail.
In the chamber, the parliamentarians from the extreme right of Chega showed banners in that direction and protested during the guest’s speech, who also had his own supporters in the outside square.
The Brazilian head of state also settled his accounts with Bolsonaro’s denialist government and its management of the pandemic by stating that “700,000 people died in Brazil. Half of them could be avoided.” With the same serious tone, he alluded to the attack suffered by democracy with the assault in January on the headquarters of the republic’s powers in Brasilia, he stressed that the political system of rights and freedoms resisted.
That Brazilian democracy, which did not arrive until 1985, was glimpsed on April 25, 1974, Lula explained, when the news of the events in Lisbon arrived from the other side of the Atlantic. “We Brazilians witness the Carnation Revolution with admiration and hope,†he declared.
