Eduardo González
The former President of the Government and former mediator in the Venezuelan crisis, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, will travel today to Caracas to attend the regional elections next Sunday, elections that, in his opinion, are an example of “dialogue, peace and respect, not imposition and sanctions”.
“Latin America depends on its capacity for great consensus, its integration and unity, given the evident agony of the OAS”, said Zapatero during his speech at the seminar Multilateral Cooperation and Regional Recovery Post COVID-19, organized by Common Action Forum and Casa de America at the headquarters of this institution.
The future of the region, he continued, “corresponds to Latin America, and Europe and Spain must listen to Latin America and stop giving lessons”. “Spain discovers itself from Latin America and, if we want to know what we are, we must listen to Latin America, work with Latin America and not give lessons to Latin America,” he said.
“Tomorrow (today) I will travel to Venezuela on the occasion of the regional and municipal elections”, which represent an example of “dialogue, peace and respect, not imposition and sanctions”, in contrast with the attitude of instances “such as the Lima Group, which acts in the service of the objectives of the United States and continues with the delirium that communism must be ended in the region”, he declared. “Communism is the excuse, the argument, but it is not the problem, the problem is poverty, inequality, insensitivity and racism towards the problems of many people”, he concluded.
At the same event, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced that “COVID-19 has increased inequality” even in the fight “against the worst pandemic of the last hundred years”. “In rich countries, while the denialist extreme right rejects vaccines,” in low-income countries “only 2% of the population has received at least one of the doses,” he affirmed.
“We all wish to see the day when the WHO declares the world pandemic-free,” but “long before COVID-19, the world was already sick, victim of a virus also called inequality,” Lula continued. “Even if we manage to get out of the pandemic, 800 million men, women and children will continue to suffer the scourge of hunger,” he warned. “For hunger there are no vaccines, but there is no need to invent them either, because what is needed is political will,” he declared.
“Financial resources exist,” but “the world governance created after World War II no longer solves the problems” and, therefore, “it is necessary to rebuild international institutions on new foundations,” said the former Brazilian president. For this reason, Lula proposed the holding of “a world conference, with the participation of all States and civil society, to define a new global governance, fair and representative and with the power to make decisions”.
