“We have to replace discouragement with dreams, hatred with hope”, says Lula

During his visit to Spain, where he participated, this Sunday (19), in the closing ceremony of the Global Progressive Mobilization, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reaffirmed his position in defense of the sovereignty and appreciation of the global South, for multilateralism and the reform of international organizations and said that guaranteeing democracy means guaranteeing rights. “We have to replace discouragement with dreams, hatred with hope”, he highlighted.

Lula also considered that “democracy is not a destiny, it is a daily construction” and spoke about how the routine oppression of working women and men results in a life of daily deprivation.

“It is not democracy when a father does not know where to get his next plate of food. There is no democracy when the grandson loses his grandfather in line at the hospital. There is no democracy when the mother spends hours on a crowded bus and cannot kiss her children goodnight. There is no democracy when someone is discriminated against because of the color of their skin, when a woman dies just because she is a woman.

Reformed multilateralism

As one of the main voices in defense of a new world order with active and sovereign participation of the global South, greater dialogue between nations and against imperialist warmongering, Lula said that “to be progressive in the international arena today is to defend a reformed multilateralism. It is to defend that peace prevails over force. It is to fight hunger and protect the environment. It is to reinstitute the credibility of the UN, which has been eroded by the irresponsibility of its permanent members.”

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The Brazilian president once again defended the need to create an international system in which the rules “apply to everyone, in which developed and developing countries are on an equal footing in the Security Council, the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization”.

Furthermore, he argued that the global South has been paying the bill “for wars that it did not provoke and for climate change that it did not cause. It is treated as a backyard of the great powers and suffocated by abusive tariffs and unpayable debts.”

Role of Progressive Global Mobilization

In this scenario, he argued, Progressive Global Mobilization “has an important mission: to recover the capacity of progressive forces to project a better future, a future with social justice, equality and democracy. These three terms — mobilization, global and progressive — need to go together, not as slogans, but as a living reality.”

Lula recalled the various moments in which powers raised false justifications to start conflicts with other countries, as occurred, for example, with Iraq and Libya, and declared: “And now they are trying, once again, to build the idea that Iran was going to build an atomic bomb. They were not going to build an atomic bomb. We need to put an end to this story of telling lies about people and then destroying them.”

He also criticized the way the US treats the countries of Latin America — “sold as if it were the world of drug trafficking” — and the Middle East — “sold as if it were the world of terrorism”.

Lula also said that the progressive camp was often a victim of “our political innocence”. And he added: “How many times do we win elections and then the press, the financial system, conservative academics write articles and articles forcing us to try to destroy what was the reason for our election. And we become scared and try to please the market, the business people and what happens is that we become demoralized.”

He then declared to applause: “Poor people want the right to a decent job, to live in a good house, to study. They want the right for their son to be a doctor like his boss’s son. They want the right to a decent healthcare system. It’s the only thing we want and all of this is in the Bible, in the Constitution of each country and in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And why doesn’t it comply with me?”

Close to concluding his speech, he highlighted: “My cause is democracy. My cause is freedom. My cause is equality. My cause is to ensure that all people are respected.”