Lula gave a lecture before an enthusiastic audience at the Parisian university Sciences Po. | Photo: PT

Paris, November 18 (RHC)-- The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is touring European cities to meet with political leaders and authorities, blamed the president, Jair Bolsonaro, for placing the South American country in a situation of political and diplomatic isolation.

Before about one thousand people gathered at Sciences Po University, in the French capital to listen to his lecture, Lula said that the current government has turned Brazil's back to the world.  He added that this isolation is harmful even for the community of nations, since Brazil's active participation is necessary for the world, he said.

Lula affirmed that "nobody wants to invest in Brazil" because Bolsonaro "is rude to women, does not love Black people, burns the jungle, and because he is violent with the native people."

Among other criticisms, he qualified him as "important piece of the fascist, Nazi extreme right", as well as "bad copy of (Donald) Trump".  He pointed out that "Bolsonaro does not think, he has no ideas.  He understands absolutely nothing, other than talking nonsense, spreading false news and destroying what we built".

The founder of the Workers' Party (PT) assured that he "never saw so many people going hungry in Brazil" as now. He also asked the students in the auditorium (among whom there was a significant group of Brazilian nationals) not to stop voting in the 2022 presidential elections.

Regarding these elections, for which Bolsonaro has already announced that he will be a candidate, Lula said that he feels prepared, motivated and in good health to be a presidential candidate.

He assured that the PT will have a candidate for President of the country and pointed out that he will decide in the first quarter of next year if he enters the presidential race.

Lula met this Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom he talked about the famine situation in Brazil and the urgency of containing the deforestation of the Amazon, promoted by Bolsonaro. He had previously held a meeting with the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo.

His agenda for this day includes receiving the "Political Courage 2021" award, given to him by the magazine Politique Internationale. In the evening, he is due to travel to Madrid, where he plans to meet with the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez.

According to land reform activist and one of the founders of the Landless Rural Workers Movement, João Pedro Stedile, a total of 20 million Brazilians live in hunger and another 70 million suffer from food insecurity.

The crisis generated by the pandemic has thrown 67 million workers into poverty, according to the National Household Sample Survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

This office revealed that there are 14 million unemployed, six million people who are no longer looking for work and 40 million who do not have a steady job and, consequently, lack a stable income.