Lula defends Maduro again and says that “no one is obliged to agree”

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (PT) returned to defend this Tuesday night (30) the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro. The petista received Maduro on Monday (29) with state honors. After the meeting, Lula stated that Venezuela is the target of “narratives”. This morning, the president received 11 of the 12 presidents of South America for a summit organized by the Brazilian government.

Lula’s statement on “narratives” against Venezuela was not well received by two participants. Earlier, the presidents of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and Chile, Gabriel Boric, stated that they disagree with Lula and that the Venezuelan dictatorship is not about “narratives”, but about reality.

“Maduro is a president who is part of our continent, of this part of the American continent. Maduro was invited and there was a lot of respect with Maduro’s participation, including the comrades who criticized, criticizing the limits of democracy, because in these meetings no one is obliged to agree with anyone,” said the Brazilian representative. Lula also said that Maduro wants to establish a “payment schedule” for the debt with Brazil.

The statement also caused the PT member to become at odds with the National Congress and the United States. And this occurs precisely in the week in which the government is trying to avoid new defeats in the vote on the provisional measure that deals with the restructuring of the Esplanada dos Ministérios.

Matter of People’s Gazette showed that, privately, members of the governing base admitted that Lula’s “pompous and warm” reception to the Venezuelan dictator on the eve of important votes for the Planalto can increase resistance among parliamentarians.

Construction of the “narrative”

The president stressed that “everyone knows what I say and everyone knows what I think”. According to him, “in politics, every time you want to destroy an opponent, the first thing you do is build a negative narrative of him”.

“Since the [Hugo] Chávez took office, a narrative was constructed against Chávez. I had the opportunity to see that, a narrative where you determine that the guy is a demon. From there you start playing everyone against him. That’s how it happened with Chávez. That’s how it happened to me, ”he said.

“So, what I said to Maduro is that there is a narrative in the world that Venezuela does not have democracy and that he made mistakes. I said that it is his obligation to build his narrative with the true facts”, he added.

Reviews of Lacalle Pou and Boric

During tonight’s press conference, Lula was asked directly about the criticisms of his colleagues in Uruguay and Chile. The Brazilian president stated that “it is not possible that there is not a minimum of democracy in Venezuela”.

“The fact that there were two fellow presidents who did not agree, I don’t know what newspaper they read it in. I said that this meeting was not called here as a group of Lula’s friends. The presidents of South America were called to discuss the possibility of build a multilateral body capable of giving organic density to our relations with other economic blocs,” he said.

“The same demands that the democratic world makes of Venezuela, it does not make of Saudi Arabia. It’s very weird. What I defend is that each country be sovereign in its decisions”, said Lula.