At the UN, Bolsonaro will meet with leaders of countries that account for 0.75% of Brazil’s exports

The extra agenda of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) during his visit to New York, in the United States, next week, should be marked by bilateral meetings with presidents of countries that, together, account for only 0.75% of Brazilian exports.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), Bolsonaro is expected to meet with the presidents of Poland, Ecuador, Guatemala and Serbia. In addition to the relatively small economic relevance for Brazil, the four countries have in common the fact that they are governed by right-wing and conservative leaders.

Bolsonaro is expected to arrive in New York on Monday (19) to attend the 77th meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN). Before that, he will pass through London, UK, where he will attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

As usual, Bolsonaro will deliver the opening speech of the meeting, scheduled for Tuesday morning (20). Traditionally, the presidents and heads of state who participate in the meeting take advantage of the event to hold bilateral meetings with their counterparts to discuss issues of mutual interest such as political or commercial topics.

This year, what drew attention was the size of the economic participation that the four countries whose leaders Bolsonaro will meet have in the Brazilian trade balance.

According to data from the Ministry of Economy, Brazilian exports in 2021 totaled US$ 280.8 billion. Together, the four countries imported just over US$ 2.1 billion. This is equivalent to 0.75% of everything that Brazil exported to the entire world.

In the ranking of the main importers of Brazilian products, Poland is in 49th place (US$ 902.5 million), followed by Ecuador in 50th (US$ 895.3 million), Guatemala in 63rd and Serbia in 125th position.

The diplomatic relevance of these countries to Brazil draws attention especially in comparison with last year’s agenda, when Bolsonaro met with the then British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. In 2021, the United Kingdom imported US$ 3.07 billion in Brazilian products and ranked 21st in the ranking of foreign buyers in the country.

Tight schedule and ideological proximity

The secretary of Multilateral Political Affairs, Ambassador Paulino Franco de Carvalho Neto, justified the absence of bilateral meetings between the president and leaders of the most influential countries on the international scene to two main factors: Bolsonaro’s short stay in New York and the possibility that he will meet other heads of state in London during the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

The ambassador also pointed to the electoral calendar as a factor that limited Bolsonaro’s agenda in the United States.

“He (Bolsonaro) is in the midst of an electoral campaign and that doesn’t allow him to stay out of the country for a long time,” said the diplomat. In addition to the presidents of these four countries, Bolsonaro is also expected to meet with the Secretary-General of the UN, the Portuguese António Guterres.

For the professor of International Relations at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Guilherme Casarões, Bolsonaro’s planned meetings with the presidents of the four countries have a strong ideological bias.

“These four presidents with whom he will meet have something in common: a conservative agenda. They are conservative in terms of customs and liberal in terms of the economy,” explained Casarões.

“We see that these presidents are aligned with Bolsonaro’s profile, but diplomatically this adds little”, said the professor.

In Poland, the president is Andrezj Duda. Re-elected in 2020, he is a right-wing and openly conservative politician.

In recent years, he has been criticized by international bodies, including the European Union (to which the country is a part), for adopting an agenda contrary to the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community and for carrying out a reform of the Judiciary that would have diminished the independence of the judges and ministers of the Polish Supreme Court.

During the 2020 re-election campaign, he even claimed that an alleged “LGBT ideology” would be worse than communism. Bolsonaro and Duda met in 2021, during the last UN General Assembly.

In Ecuador, the president is former banker Guillermo Lasso. Also from the right, Lasso was elected defending a conservative, anti-corruption agenda and promising to revive the Ecuadorian economy.

He beat candidate Andrés Arauz, supported by former president Rafael Correa, the main left-wing leader. Lasso is known to be against the decriminalization of abortion.

In March of this year, he partially vetoed a law passed by the Ecuadorian Parliament that allowed abortion up to the 18th week of pregnancy for women victims of rape.

After the veto, the time limit for abortion in these situations was 12 weeks. Since June, Lasso has faced a series of protests led by indigenous and workers’ movements demonstrating against inflation and rising unemployment in the country.

In June, he even declared a state of exception in parts of the country. Since then, organizations such as the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch have criticized the alleged excessive use of force in the police’s repression of the protests.

In Guatemala, the president is the right-wing and conservative leader Alejandro Giammattei. He was elected in 2019.

Former head of the country’s penitentiary system, he won the elections promising to end corruption and toughen the fight against organized crime in the country. He also says he is against abortion and defends life from conception.

Giammattei has also faced protests in his country. In March of this year, for example, women protested in the streets of the country against a bill that provided for sentences of up to 10 years in prison for those who underwent an abortion.

In a move that stunned human rights advocates, Giammattei announced he would veto a law claiming it had “deficiencies” and violated the country’s constitution.

In Serbia, the president is Aleksandar Vucic. In April, he was re-elected with 58% of the vote. A conservative, Vucic pledged in his campaign to maintain political ties with Russia even after the country invades Ukraine.

In August, after protests in the streets of the capital, Belgrade, Vucic announced that the government would ban a pan-European LGBTQIA+ pride parade. He justified the decision on the grounds that the country faces threats from far-right groups and tensions with Kosovo. Entities that defend human rights say they will challenge the decision in court.

This text was originally published here.