The president of the republic ruled out this Wednesday that Lula da Silva’s visit to parliament during his visit to Portugal in April had called into question relations between Portugal and Brazil, saying they are “very sweet”.
Speaking to journalists at the Lisbon Tourism Exchange, which he visits accompanied by Brazil’s Tourism Minister Daniela Carneiro, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was asked if he had tried to “sweeten” Portugal-Brazil in his contact with the Brazilian minister relations following the controversy involving Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva. “The relations with Brazil are always sweet, always: Brazil is sweet, Portugal is sweet. And the political and diplomatic relations are very sweet, I mean it’s the superlative of sweet, they are very, very, very sweet and very Good”he answered.
The Speaker of the Parliament, Augusto Santos Silva, announced this Wednesday that the Assembly of the Republic will hold a formal session to welcome Brazil’s President, Lula da Silva, after the Foreign Minister announced that Brazil’s head of state would intervene in the formal session on 25 April. Santos Silva also indicated that details, such as the date of the welcome session, at which Lula da Silva will speak, are yet to be determined.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had no doubts that “there will be a very successful visit by the President of Brazil to Portugal” and expected the program for that visit to be “very rich and very varied”, with the award of the Camões Prize to the musician Chico Buarque. “We are of course going to have a summit between the Portuguese government and the government presided over by the president, who is a Brazilian executive, we will have several interesting and important contacts”he stressed.
When asked if he hoped there could be a consensus about Lula da Silva’s speech in the Assembly of the Republic to prevent demonstrations, the head of state replied: “In a democracy there are always people who like it and people who don’t do that.” “It is part of the logic of democracy, but there is one thing that is beyond mere issues of party, opinion, positions, and that is the relationship between the homelands and the states and so when it comes to the relationship between Brazil and Portugal, Portugal and Brazil, between the Brazilian head of state and Portugal, the Portuguese head of state and Brazil, is above all”he said.
The President of the Republic specifically recalled his visit to Brazil in July 2022, when he met Lula da Silva – at the time a candidate for the Brazilian presidential election – which prompted the then Brazilian head of state, Jair Bolsonaro, to stop their meeting with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. “There were times when during my stay in Brazil there was a lot of speculation about relations between the countries, but not a word came out of my mouth that was not always of interest to Brazil and the Brazilian people”he said.
When asked who had invited Lula da Silva to come to Portugal, the President of the Republic recalled that “whoever invites a head of state to visit his state is the head of state”. “That is why I invited the President-elect to visit Portugal, and the moment that was possibly found was that Portugal – as it was the first country to receive a visit from the President-elect before taking office – was the first country in Europe to be visited in April”he stressed.
The president of the Assembly of the Republic revealed that his proposal for a solemn session to welcome Lula da Silva received a “very large consensus” at the leadership conference, with only one party opposed.
Source: DN
