After the re-election of the Nicaraguan dictator, Daniel Ortega, in a front-line election, the former president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) compared the stay in power of the Latin American with that of the prime minister of Germany, Angela Merkel, who turned 16 at the head of the European country.
“Why Angela Merkel can stay 16 years in power and Daniel Ortega can’t? Why Felipe González [primeiro-ministro da Espanha entre 1982 e 1996] can you stay 14 years in power? What’s the logic?”, asked the PT in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País.
Lula answered the question asked by journalists about the situation in Nicaragua. Earlier this month, Ortega, 75, won the election in which he ran for the fourth consecutive term. Alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo, his deputy, he ran with five other candidates — all part of the theater, as they are allies of the government.
The former president began by saying that “every politician who begins to think he is indispensable or irreplaceable begins to become a small dictator.” “That’s why I’m in favor of alternating power. I can be against it, but I can’t interfere in the decisions of a people. We have to defend the self-determination of peoples.”
Then, however, he made the comparison with European leaders. The journalists then countered that the two remained in power without imprisoning opponents — in the months leading up to the election, Ortega’s regime arrested seven opposition candidates, accused of money laundering and treason.
When responding, the PT member relativized the regime and remembered his time in detention. “I cannot judge what happened in Nicaragua. In Brazil, I was arrested, I was considered elected President of the Republic and I was arrested. I spent 580 days in jail for Bolsonaro to be elected,” he said. “I don’t know what people did to get arrested. […] If Daniel Ortega arrested the opposition for not contesting the election as they did in Brazil against me, he is totally wrong.”
Lula’s relativization to the Ortega regime is in line with the position of his party, which published a note celebrating the reelection of the Nicaraguan dictator. In the text signed by Romenio Pereira, secretary of International Relations, the caption classifies the election as “a great popular and democratic manifestation” and says that the result confirms “the population’s support for a political project whose main objective is the construction of a a socially just and egalitarian country”.
The PT member defended that not only on the Caribbean island demonstrations are prohibited and that the police are violent all over the world. “Now, it’s very funny because we complain about a decision that avoided protests in Cuba and we don’t complain that the Cubans were prepared to give vaccines and didn’t have syringes, and the Americans did not allow the vaccine to enter Cuba.”
The Cuban regime claimed, since the beginning of the health crisis, to face difficulties in acquiring medical supplies due to the American embargo on the country.
The journalists countered that it is possible to condemn the blockade and ask for the freedom of opponents. For Lula, however, the problem of democracy in Cuba will not be resolved “by urging opponents to create a problem for the government”, but rather by ending the embargo.
During the interview, the PT, a likely candidate for the presidency in the 2022 elections, also took the opportunity to praise his years in power and criticize the management of rival Jair Bolsonaro, who he called a liar.
“When I left the presidency in 2010, Brazil was in an international situation and an internal situation of economic growth, of very high respectability,” he said. “What we are seeing today is that Brazil is broke.”
Lula highlighted the numbers of unemployed (13.7 million) and hungry people (which reached 19 million during the pandemic).
For him, Bolsonaro’s election was part of a moment of “anomaly in world politics”. “The Brazilian voter voted for Bolsonaro for the same reasons the American voted for [Donald] Trump It was a moment of emotional maladjustment for a part of humanity.”
He also shot at former judge and former minister Sergio Moro, who is also a virtual candidate for the presidency next year. “Judge Moro and prosecutors had formed a political and economic gang to destroy me and my party,” he said of the Lava Jato investigations.
Lula has been on a trip to Europe since last week. He was welcomed by leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and addressed the European Parliament. Macron is disaffected by Bolsonaro, with whom he has had friction since 2019.
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