Lula meets foreign leaders on the 1st day and hears promises to resume dialogue

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) set aside his first day of work, this Monday (2), to receive, in consecutive bilateral meetings, a series of foreign delegations. Among the leaders who met with the petista are the heads of state of Portugal, Spain and Argentina.

Upon leaving the office of the Itamaraty Palace, many politicians extolled the future of relations with Brazil. The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said that Brazil “is greatly missed” on the international stage, in reference to the diplomatic isolation imposed by the government of the now ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Meetings with the heads of government and state, who traveled to Brazil to attend the PT’s inauguration ceremony, led Lula to schedule only for this Tuesday (3) the trip to Pelé’s wake, in Santos. By 6 pm, the PT had received ten international leaders.

Lula arrived in the morning at the Itamaraty Palace, in Brasília, for the meetings. The first meeting was with the King of Spain, Felipe 6th. Next, another 16 bilateral meetings were scheduled, with authorities mainly from Latin America, but also from European, Asian and African countries.

The extensive international agenda right on the first day of work contrasts with the Brazilian position on the international scene during the Bolsonaro administration. The former government’s first chancellor, Ernesto Araújo, even claimed that Brazil was an “international pariah”, while making one of his many criticisms of the multilateral system.

Upon arriving at the meeting with Lula, the Portuguese president took the opportunity to make a veiled criticism of the times of the PT’s predecessor, citing Brazil’s absence from international forums. “Multilateral Brazil, Brazil on the international scene, Brazil in organizations [internacionais] he is sorely missed,” said Rebelo de Sousa —with whom Bolsonaro even canceled a dinner, causing a certain amount of diplomatic discomfort, after the politician met with the petista still at the time of the campaign.

The Portuguese head of state added that he would deal with the date of the president’s trip to Portugal. In November, shortly after being elected, Lula was in Lisbon with Rebelo and the Prime Minister, António Costa, on a stopover on his way back from COP27, in Egypt.

The Argentine president, Alberto Fernández, a historic ally of the PT, directed the same indirect criticism of Bolsonaro, highlighting Brazil’s absence from international organizations as something “evident”. According to the politician, he and Lula agreed to “set in motion” the relationship between the two neighbors.

“From an institutional point of view, it was a great meeting, also because we clearly decided to put the link between Argentina and Brazil in motion again with all the strength that this link always had. In the last four years it was difficult, but I think that now the two we are convinced of the importance of this bond and the need to give this bond the transcendence it deserves,” he said.

Fernández also extolled the Brazilian tendency to return to prioritizing regional forums in Latin America, as has been said by Lula’s chancellor, Mauro Vieira.

“Obviously I share the desire to unite Latin America again as a common space. We both think that Celac can supply that, but it has not achieved the institutionality it deserves. Surely on the 23rd we will talk about all this and on the 24th we will meet [cúpula da] Celac, in Buenos Aires. Lula is a regional leader, who will give Latin America a very important boost,” he said, referring to the PT’s scheduled trip to Argentina, for the meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean collegiate.

The Chilean Gabriel Boric, another one who had an agenda with Lula, stated that one of the subjects discussed in the conversation was the situation in Venezuela. The leftist leader defended the country’s reintegration in international forums.

“For the solution of the crisis that Venezuela has experienced in recent years, it is important that it be incorporated again into multilateral circuits. Problems cannot be solved by isolating countries.”