Published 03/07/2025 16:42 | Edited 03/07/2025 17:03
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner in Buenos Aires on Thursday (3). He traveled to the neighboring country to participate in the 66th Mercosur Summit and assume the temporary leadership of the bloc.
“I was very happy to see her and find her so well, with strength and fighting ghana. I have for Cristina a friendship of many years, which goes far beyond the institutional relationship. A affection and affection of friends, companions of political field and ideals of social justice and combat inequalities,” said Lula via social networks.
The president also said that “besides giving my solidarity to her for everything he has lived, I wished all the strength to continue fighting the same firmness that it has been the hallmark of his career in life and politics. I could feel the popular support he has received on the streets and I know how important this recognition in the most difficult times is well.
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Cristina is under house arrest and the visit had to be authorized by the Argentine court. She was sentenced to six years in prison and lifetime ineligibility in early June, for alleged irregularities in public works during her government (2007-2015).
The former president also highlighted the visit on her profile: “Today we received partner Lula in my home, where I am under house arrest by decision of a judiciary who has long failed to hide his political subordination and became a political party at the service of economic power,” he said.
She stressed that “Lula was also persecuted, they also made him Lawfare until arrested him and also tried to put it on. They could not. (Lula) returned with the vote of the Brazilian people and with their heads raised. That’s why, today, his visit was much more than a personal gesture: it was a political act of solidarity.”
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Cristina also criticized the country’s driving by the far right, led by Javier Milei: “It has greatly cost us to build Argentine democracy to allow now, step by step, to dismantle. However, this same democracy is being destroyed by a government that is ‘libertarian’, but which only gives freedom to the richest.”
The process that led Cristina to the conviction has been criticized by experts and politicians, who point out incongruities and inconsistencies. Moreover, they argue that the case is part of a strategy of lawfare -The use of judicial institutions to criminalize opposition and eliminate electoral competitors-as happened with Lula and other South American presidents.
Source: vermelho.org.br
