Portugal: President flies to Brazil for Lula da Silva’s inauguration

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Portugal: President flies to Brazil for Lula da Silva’s inauguration

1:15 CAT | 30 Dec 2022

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Portugal's Presidency ]

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa travels from Lisbon to Brasilia on Friday, where he will represent the Portuguese state at the inauguration ceremony of the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, on Sunday, 1 January.

At least 19 heads of state are expected at Lula da Silva’s inauguration, including the king of Spain and the presidents of Germany, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Cabo Verde, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guinea-Bissau, Peru, Timor-Leste and Uruguay, among others.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also attended the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil on 1 January 2019.

This is his eighth trip as president of Portugal to Brazil and the third this year.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party (PT), who has already served two terms as president of Brazil, between 2003 and 2011, was elected to office again on 30 October, in the second round of voting, with 50.9% of the votes, in an election in which he defeated the incumbent Brazilian head of state, Jair Bolsonaro.

That night, shortly after the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Court declared the election mathematically over, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa congratulated Lula da Silva and expressed his confidence that his term of office “will correspond to a promising period in fraternal relations” with Portugal.

Following that congratulatory message, the two spoke by telephone, “with both reiterating the importance of good relations between the two peoples and the two sister countries,” according to a statement issued by the presidency of Portugal.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had already announced in September of this year his intention to attend the inauguration of the next President of Brazil.

At that time, during the electoral campaign, the Portuguese president attended the civic-military parade of 7 September in Brasilia, alongside Jair Bolsonaro, and spoke in Congress at the solemn session commemorating the 200th anniversary of Brazil’s independence.

Also this year, in July, the Portuguese president was in Rio de Janeiro to mark the centenary of the first air crossing of the South Atlantic and at the inauguration of the São Paulo Biennial Book Fair, which had Portugal as the honoured country.

The programme of that visit was to end in Brasilia, with a lunch with the President of Brazil but was cancelled by Bolsonaro after learning that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was to meet with former Brazilian head of state Lula da Silva beforehand in São Paulo.

Source: Lusa