This Sunday Lula Da Silva took office as president of Brazil for the third time and in his speech he defended democracy as the great victor in the elections and made a “terrifying” diagnosis about the inheritance received in terms of public policies.
In the speech in the Chamber of Deputies before the Legislative Assembly and foreign guests, including Argentine President Alberto Fernández, Lula emphasized that his priority in foreign policy will be Latin America, Mercosur, Unasur, the Brics and an “active and haughty” with its main extra-regional trade partners, such as China, the United States and the European Union. In addition, he assured that “the legacy received is terrifying” due to the destruction of public policies and, above all, the economic model applied with the return of hunger.
“State companies and public banks were squandered; the national patrimony was handed over. The country’s resources were plundered to satisfy the stupidity of rentiers and private shareholders of public companies. It is on these terrible ruins that I assume the commitment, together with the Brazilian people , to rebuild the country and make again a Brazil of all and for all,” said the former president between 2003 and 2010.
“Having to repeat this commitment today in the face of the advance of misery and the return of the hunger that we had overcome is the most serious symptom of the devastation that has been imposed on the country in recent years,” he said, clarifying that he would not adopt a “spirit of revenge” against Bolsonarismo but to apply the law with a broad right of defense.
Lula accused the Bolsonaro government of having committed “genocide” with “obscurantism and denial” applied in health policies to face the pandemic, which left almost 700,000 dead.
The president maintained that the electoral campaign showed two country projects and a contrast between democracy and dictatorship and recalled the political climate of the eighties after the end of the dictatorship. “Under the winds of redemocratization, we said: Dictatorship Never Again! Today, after the terrible challenge we have overcome, we must say: Democracy Forever!” Lula stated.
The president called to fight against the public spending ceiling law and “put the wheel of the economy back into operation” by encouraging domestic consumption, seeking a labor reform to protect self-employed workers and reindustrialization based on the development of science and technology.
“No nation has risen or can rise above the misery of its people. The rights and interests of the population, the strengthening of democracy and the recovery of national sovereignty will be the pillars of our government,” he said in his speech.
In turn, he promised to reactivate government transparency systems and announced that he would revoke the decrees that allowed thousands of people access to arms and ammunition: “We don’t need weapons but education, books and culture.”
Lula said that his government will seek to repair the historical debt with indigenous peoples to protect their territory from predatory activities, especially in the Amazon region, and cited the creation of the first Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
