President of the FPA says he does not work with ideology

The president of the Agricultural Parliamentary Front (FPA), deputy Pedro Lupion (PP-PR), said, this Thursday, that the largest sectorial group in the National Congress defends its guidelines “with science and technology and not with ideology”. Lupion’s speech refutes a statement by President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) who, in an interview, classified the agribusiness sector’s problem with his government as an “ideological” issue.

Lula’s statement was made during an interview with a group of radio stations in the state of Goiás this Thursday morning (15). At the opportunity, the president was asked about the relationship with the sector, whose members he has already called “fascists and denialists” in official speeches. In response, Lula said that “their problem with us is ideological, it is not a problem of too much money in the Safra Plan”.

“Since the beginning of the year, the government has brought numerous signs against the sector, especially in the speech of President Lula himself when he generalized and called national agriculture fascist”, said the president of the FPA. President Lula has been waging successive clashes with the sector since the beginning of the government and faces difficulties in articulating topics of interest in the National Congress, since the FPA brings together more than 300 parliamentarians.

Lula government accumulates clashes with agribusiness

In recent months, Lula has seen his proposal to restructure ministries be altered by the actions of the FPA. In the original proposal, the government foresaw that the National Supply Company (Conab) would be under the command of the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA). With the articulation of the Front led by Lupion, Congress endorsed the return to the Ministry of Agriculture of competences considered strategic by the sector. In addition, the government suffered defeats in other votes in the National Congress, as was the case with the approval of the time frame project for the demarcation of indigenous lands.

Lupion also said, in response to President Lula’s position, that agribusiness has an extensive agenda to deal with and that it counts on the good sense of the government to evolve. “Invasions of criminal lands took place in the first three months of the government, we still don’t know how much will be used in the Safra Plan, on the eve of June. We have serious rural credit problems, yes, we are still rebuilding the 2022/23 harvest plan. Therefore, our issue is the development of agriculture with legal security, credit and public policies that do not take away the rights of Brazilian citizens. We have an extensive agenda in the National Congress and we count on the good sense of the federal government to evolve and bring Brazil back to growth, with an increasingly robust GDP”, pointed out the president of the FPA.