Jair Bolsonaro’s government has sadly ceased to exist in the world by not attending the 2022 main summits and being ignored by international authorities. Not even for the World Cup in Qatar if the president is defeated in the election campaign, and for foreign and Brazilian observers, Planalto is paying dearly for four years of an not always consistent foreign policy. toxic image. abroad.
For the Climate Summit that has been taking place in Egypt since the start of the week, Bolsonaro has not even considered attending, and his term ends without even attending a climate-related meeting led by the Brazilian president for the first time. UN. In total, more than 90 heads of state, as well as dozens of heads of government, ministers and senior officials will attend the event in Egypt.
In fact, Brazil’s domain will be occupied by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is in danger of attracting the world’s attention when he arrives in Egypt next week with an environmental agenda and a new international addition for the country. Among its closest allies, the strategy is to use Amazon as part of the international recovery of the country’s image and credibility.
But the melancholy end of Bolsonaro’s diplomacy is not limited to environmental issues. Before returning to Brazil, Lula will stay for two days in Portugal, where he wants to use the meeting to send the message of a new relationship he plans to establish with Europe.
Bolsonaro never paid an official visit to the Portuguese government, although he did stop in Lisbon. Itamaraty has even knocked on the doors of several European governments to make a state visit over the past few years. But rejection was common. In recent months, in places like Paris, the order within ministries has been to have as little contact with Brazilian authorities as possible. After the election result was determined, some foreign embassies in Brazil chose to postpone everything that is not urgent for Brazilian officials to 2023.
The end of government can still be marked by an unprecedented gesture: the absence of the head of government at the G20’s annual main summit, which takes place ten days later this year in Indonesia. The presence of Chancellor Carlos França has been confirmed. But until Thursday, Itamaraty was unable to say whether Bolsonaro would attend the event.
Sources at the high command of national diplomacy told UOL that Bolsonaro would not go. But some of the main voices among his aides would still be trying to convince him of the importance of the presidency’s institutional involvement.
Foreign diplomats point out that if Bolsonaro’s decision not to travel is upheld, Bolsonaro’s international apathy will collapse and his absence will be “pity” for a government that dwarfs Brazil in the world.
At the G20 summit in Rome in 2021, Bolsonaro experienced a state of international pariah with a completely empty agenda ignored by other leaders. More recently, he saw his passage through the United Nations General Assembly in New York, marked by the absence of high-level meetings, and even missed a meeting with the organization’s secretary-general, Antonio Guterres.
So far, its participation in the Mercosur Summit, which is scheduled to take place in Uruguay in three weeks, has also not been confirmed. The bloc has never been a priority, and Brazil’s political absence over the past four years has contributed to weakening integration projects.
Qatar’s invitation to the President of Brazil to the World Cup, which will be held at the end of the month, did not go unanswered. It is customary to have the head of state of the finalist country in the game. In Bolsonaro’s case, that final would have taken place a few days before the end of his term.
A hearing at the UN next Monday, scheduled for months to consider human rights policies with the government of Jair Bolsonaro, promises to turn into an avalanche of complaints against the administration that came to power in 2019. Within four years, he disbanded a significant part of the structures defending fundamental rights in the country.
Institutional transitions
But in many governments, peaks happen in the middle of power transitions. At the G20 in 2021, conservative Angela Merkel took socialist Olaf Scholz, who will take over the German government in a few weeks, to meet with other leaders.
In 2008, the George W. Bush administration briefed the team of President-elect Barack Obama on all the steps taken at ministerial meetings and summits at the time of the international financial crisis.
In the 1990s, Itamar Franco took Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the Summit of the Americas to introduce him to the world and show that transitions to democracy can happen without setbacks.
source: Noticias
