President Alberto Fernández anticipated this Monday that Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva will visit Argentina “before taking office” as the new president of Brazil, after holding a meeting with the winner of the ballot in a hotel in São Paulo.
“He told me he was going to visit us before taking office”indicated the president in declarations to the press, and maintained that “With Lula we will have an activist for Argentina to enter the Brics”the coalition of nations made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
In an interview with C5N in Brazil, Fernández also said that if he kept silent during Jair Bolsonaro’s government it was to “preserve institutional responsibility, keep Mercosur alive and keep the link with Brazil alive, hoping that things will change, and today they changed.” “.
The Head of State also revealed that while he was at the Intercontinental Hotel in São Paulo, Lula received a call from US President Joe Biden.
“While he was talking to me, he answered a call from Joe Biden”indicated Fernández and said that after that conversation “I gave him my view of how we have to face the relationship with the United States at this time”.
“The gas that we can extract from Vaca Muerta can supply the entire south of Brazil”Fernandez maintained, while revealing that he had discussed this issue with the president-elect of the neighboring country, Lula Da Silva, who “was very interested.”
The Argentine president also indicated that he spoke with Lula about the economic relationship between Argentina and Brazil and, within this framework, the exchange of products such as minerals and food bilaterally and between both countries and the region with the world.
Alberto Fernández met this afternoon with Lula after his victory in the ballot which was held this Sunday in Brazil and with the expectation of a stage in which the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) will play a key role in “reuniting the region”.
Upon arriving at the meeting, Fernández expressed his desire to “give the president-elect the hug he deserves” and added: “Lula is a good man, he is a leader in the region. We are very happy”.
In this context, he recalled his visit to the Curitiba prison, Paraná state, when he visited the winner of the ballot in Brazil.
The President arrived at the meeting with Lula together with Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero and the Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli. “A lot of expectations. We just got here and now they’re going to meet. Then there’s going to be a lunch”said a few minutes before the start of the meeting the spokeswoman for the Presidency Gabriela Cerruti, also present in the Argentine delegation in Brazil.
Fernández is the first president to meet with the elected president of Brazil after the ballot in which he defeated Bolsonaro with 50.9% of the vote compared to 49.1% for the current president, who was running for re-election.
All my love, my admiration and my respect, dear companion. We have a future that embraces us and summons us.@LulaOfficial pic.twitter.com/XEbKPI42O0
– Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) October 31, 2022
Alberto Fernández, who left at 9 o’clock for São Paulo, had earlier expressed, in an interview with Radio Perfil, his “profound joy” for the victory achieved by the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. , in the ballot disputed in Brazil, and pointed out that “It is a happiness to have a man like him, with the leadership capacity he has in the region.”
In addition to Cafiero and Scioli, the Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello; the Legal and Technical Secretary, Vilma Ibarra; the spokeswoman for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerruti; and the deputies of the Front of All Eduardo Valdes and Carlos Heller, specified official sources.
“He is a leader like no one has seen before”said Alberto Fernandez about the leader of the PT.
In this framework, Alberto Fernández stressed that Lula’s inauguration as president of Brazil on January 1, 2023 will help “reunite the continent.”
“I have dealt with him many times, in office and as a colleague. He has an enormous peculiarity that is authentic leadership, and he arrives at a time when the region has undergone many changes. Lula’s arrival can help re-unite the continent, where globalization is in question and acquires another meaning. In CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) the presence of Brazil was lacking,” said the Argentine president.
In addition, he highlighted the value that Lula da Silva’s electoral victory in Brazil “politically represents” due to the impact of his “leadership in the region.”
“I am deeply happy for what the electoral victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil represents politically and for what his leadership in the region represents; it is an intimate, personal joy”Fernandez stressed.
He also recalled that he did not think about “speculation” at the time that Lula was a candidate and traveled to the neighboring country to support him, when he was in prison.
“I was very convinced to see Lula because that way I could draw the world’s attention. For this reason, that double sensation of seeing him with joy in freedom and of recovering his place in Brazil. There is a Latin American happiness of having a president with the leadership that Lula has in the region,” he pondered.
Fernandez said that he has known Lula since 2002 and described that his “enormous peculiarity” is the “leadership of authentic leaders” and “he never makes him feel that” but rather “puts himself in the place of another militant.”
The head of state recalled the work carried out with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to “unite the continent” but remarked that “Brazil was missing because Bolsonaro denied the importance of CELAC”, of which Fernández is now president.
Last night, after the results were known, President Alberto Fernández congratulated Lula Da Silva by telephone for his victory in the elections, according to the spokeswoman for the Presidency, Gabriela Cerruti.
The President had already spoken by telephone with the now president-elect of Brazil last Thursday, on the 77th birthday of the metallurgical worker and union leader born in the state of Pernambuco, in the northeast, and established as a child on the outskirts of Saint Paul, the same sources told Télam.
