Lula’s patience with Maduro is wearing thin

Lapatella

October 17, 2024, 7:07 p.m

One of the few remaining guarantors of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, may have reached the limit of his patience and almost capitulated in his relations with the neighboring country, after the Venezuelan prosecutor accused him of treason. “CIA agent”, the secret intelligence service of the United States government. The newspaper Folha de São Paulo reported that at the headquarters of Itamaraty, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in the corridors of the Planalto Palace, they considered engaging in a level of “damage containment” in their relationship with Venezuela, which would include not attending Maduro’s inauguration in Caracas.

by: ABC

“For me, Lula was chosen to go to prison. This is my theory,” Venezuelan Attorney General Tariq William Saab, a Maduro ally, said this week in an interview with Globovisión. Saab also criticized Chile’s president, Gabriel Buric, who has stood against Maduro’s re-election. Part of this supposed left co-opted by the CIA and the US in Latin America now has two spokespersons. “Lula, who is not the same as he was when he came out of prison, despite all the things he is now accused of, is not himself in anything: neither in physical fitness nor in the way he expresses himself,” the Venezuelan prosecutor attacked. . Saab went further, and said directly to Lola: “What do you care? “Who are you, Lola, to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs?”

These statements were a drop in the bucket for the patience of Lula and his diplomats, who have tried since the July elections to remain neutral without clearly acknowledging the possibility of fraud against the main opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez.

The decision, which was taken against the direction of the majority of independent organizations and Western democratic governments that indicated election fraud, left Lula in a delicate situation both in his foreign and domestic policies, as neutrality cost him the erosion of his popularity and his policies. He influenced his candidates in the municipal elections by associating himself with the radical left, and not with the center, as he prefers to position himself.

You can read the full memo at ABC