The political and human drama that Venezuela is going through is particularly affecting and worrying Brazil, a country that, especially since Lula da Silva came to power, and from the time of Hugo Chavez until today, has been a key country and friend in international relations. Both Lula and former President Dilma Rousseff always participated in Venezuelan elections in favour of socialist candidates. Political and commercial relations have always been in the foreground. Hence the difficulty in qualifying today what is happening in the Caribbean country, which has Lula nervous and explains the difficulties he and his party, the PT, have in intervening in the drama of the Venezuelans.
The presidency of Lula’s party acted first and accepted Nicolás Maduro’s victory in the elections before he had even presented the voting records. Lula stressed, in order to avoid compromising himself, that he was “not the leader of his party” and set his diplomacy in motion to open a channel of dialogue with Maduro. All to no avail. Attempts at mediation have so far failed, while the Venezuelan regime has remained in a standstill.
For the Brazilian left and for Lula’s left, it is not easy to define what is happening in Venezuela. Even more so if one takes into account that he always defended that it is not “a dictatorship” and showered Maduro with praise, even reminding him that “democracy is relative,” something for which he was harshly criticized.
Venezuela’s thorn is even greater for Lula and his progressive government, since in Brazil the right is reorganizing behind the back of the ultra-right Jair Bolsonaro and taking advantage of the chaos in the Caribbean country, friendly to the Brazilian left, to rub it in the face of the Brazilian left.
There is so much tension in Brazil over what is happening in Venezuela and the dispute over the political qualification of Maduro’s government, where Lula insists that it is not a dictatorship, that the president of the Supreme Court, Luis Roberto Barroso, one of the most sensible figures on the court, has personally entered into the matter.
His intervention was surely motivated by the figures offered by the newspaper The Globe which collects news from the NGO Foro Penal, according to which Venezuela has the highest number of political prisoners of the century at this time. More than 1,500 people were arrested for political reasons in one month. Venezuela has the highest number of political prisoners in almost 25 years. Of these, 114 are minors.
In light of everything that is happening in Venezuela, the president of the Brazilian Supreme Court wanted to come forward and say emphatically that the current Venezuelan regime cannot be described as either right-wing or left-wing. It is simply a “political shipwreck,” and he graphically describes it as a “humanitarian disaster,” as he confessed to Guillermo Amado of the digital edition Metrópoles.
Barroso says: “I am surprised when people argue about whether Venezuela is right-wing or left-wing. It is neither one thing nor the other, it is just a humanitarian disaster.” He added: “I have never quite understood why the Brazilian left tied itself to the master of this shipwreck that is Venezuela (…) Life gravitates according to what is right and wrong and not to ideologies.”
The discussions in Brazil about the humanitarian disaster trend, as highlighted by Judge Barroso, will continue to be a thorn in Lula and his government’s side in the municipal elections in October. These are perceived as the prelude to the 2026 presidential elections, where a new duel will be repeated between Lula’s left and the new right, not only Bolsonarist, but also that of big capital, which seems to be getting stronger every day.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Brazilian #Supreme #Court #President #Describes #Venezuelan #Regime #Humanitarian #Disaster
