Lula will visit Argentina before taking over as President of Brazil
by Federico Rivas Molina. Alberto Fernandez said Monday after his visit in Sao Paulo that Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s first trip as president-elect of Brazil will be to neighboring Argentina. The PT leader told Argentina’s president, the first international leader he met after winning Sunday’s election against Jair Bolsonaro, that he plans to make the trip before he takes office on January 1, 2022.
“He doesn’t know Argentina is his home,” Fernandez said after meeting at a hotel in Sao Paulo. “We talk more about the future than about the past,” he said. Lula da Silva spent most of his first day as president-elect receiving congratulations from foreign presidents and high-ranking officials. But there was an agenda gap, very narrow, for Fernandez’s reception. The Argentine boarded a plane with a small delegation too early on Monday, barely winning the Brazilian’s approval. With the security issue resolved, a point complicated as it was an unofficial visit of a head of state, he landed at noon in São Paulo.
The visit was important to Fernandez. Not only will Lula da Silva help mend the ruined relations between Argentina and Brazil – Fernandez is not talking to Bolsonaro. The Argentine goes through low hours in Buenos Aires, besieged by the economic crisis and disagreements plaguing the Peronist coalition he co-leads with its vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Lola, as a friend of both, can serve as a bridge to re-dialogue.
Photo: Brazil’s president-elect, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, greets Argentina’s President, Alberto Fernandez, during their meeting on Monday, October 31, in Sao Paulo. (Reuters)
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