President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) said this Thursday (14th) that he will not participate in the next Mercosur summit, scheduled for the 21st of this month, in Paraguay, which will be the first presidential meeting of the organization’s leaders since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“I’ve already said that I’m not going anymore. In politics, you can always go back on some things. But my decision, so far, is not to go to Mercosur, despite Marito’s appeal,” Bolsonaro told journalists, referring to the Paraguayan President Mario Abdo BenÃtez.
“I really like Marito, we have a lot in common with him. Like, for example, the fish farming in the great lake of Itaipu”, continued the Brazilian, when amending advances in the culture of fish in the lake that divides the two countries in the region of the state from Paraná.
Bolsonaro did not say why he gave up going to the meeting. The president is in pre-campaign and will face a presidential election in October in which he appears in second place in opinion polls.
Mercosur is made up of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, in addition to Venezuela, a country that has been suspended from the bloc since 2017. In addition to them, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru and Suriname, in addition to Bolivia, in the process of accession.
Bolsonaro has lost allies in many of these countries due to leadership changes in recent elections that brought left-wing politicians to power, such as Gabriel Boric in Chile; Pedro Castillo, in Peru; and Luis Arce, in Bolivia, in addition to Gustavo Petro, who will assume the presidency of Colombia in August.
In addition to them, Alberto Fernández, president of Argentina since 2019, also lives with him, with whom he had a disagreement in an online meeting last year.
On more than one occasion, the Brazilian government considered leaving Mercosur and, in 2019, right-wing leaders in the region created a new bloc, with political affinities, Prosul (Foro para o Progresso da América do Sul), which brought together a series of representatives who have already left power, such as Mauricio Macri (Argentina), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), MartÃn Vizcarra (Peru) and LenÃn Moreno (Ecuador), as well as Iván Duque, who left the government of Colombia.
