Speaking to international correspondents in Brasília, Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, said that is prioritizing relations with members of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP, in Portuguese). “We are at the disposal of the embassy, as is normal and natural, to seek the deepening of our relations,” he said, referring to Portugal.
“The Minister of Foreign Affairs Ernesto Araújo is already in Cape Verde for the CPLP meeting, and mobility is one of the themes. The presence of the chancellor there, and not in a meeting that also had scheduled in Buenos Aires on terrorism, shows the priority that Brazil is giving to the Portuguese-speaking countries and to the whole common agenda that we have with them“, affirmed the ambassador Pedro Miguel Silva, Secretary of Bilateral and Regional Negotiations in the Americas.
The XXIV Regular Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the CPLP is being held in Cape Verde, which presides over the Community, in the city of Mindelo. The theme of the meeting will be “Mobility as a factor of cohesion and citizenship building in the CPLP”.
According to information from the Lusa Agency, Bolsonaro and his representatives did not elaborate on how this approach will be with Portugal and other Portuguese-speaking countries. The president also did not declare if he is to sign an agreement on mobility between CPLP countries.
Controversial statements
At the same meeting, Jair Bolsonaro gave a controversial statement on hunger in Brazil. According to the president, “It’s a lie to say that are people with hunger in Brazil”. The statement generated much debate on social networks.
“People may feel sick, do not eat well, to that I agree. Now, hunger, they do not feel. You do not see people, even poor people, in the streets, with skeletal physics, as you see in some other countries around the world,” he said.
In addition, the president also said that Brazil is in the last places with regard to the use of pesticides. Both statements, however, fall into disagreement with data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
According to the Organization, Brazil had more than 5 million people in a situation of hunger in 2017, and in 2013, the country led the world ranking of spending money and consumption of pesticides.