Brazil Workers’ Party chief blasted for Maduro visit
The leader of Brazil’s Workers’ Party is under fire by some fellow leftists for attending the second-term inauguration of socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The criticism on Sen. Gleisi Hoffmann adds to divisions in Brazil’s opposition in confronting new, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro is among the harshest of many critics of Maduro, whose election last year was widely considered undemocratic, even among many on the left. Bolsonaro calls him a dictator.
Hoffmann said in a letter she wants to counter Bolsonaro’s aggressive rhetoric against Maduro, whose party had a close relationship with Brazil’s Workers Party for years.
Several left-leaning politicians criticized the visit. Former presidential candidate Luciana Genro said: “Only a corroded left can support Maduro at this time.” Writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva called it “a monstrous stupidity.”
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Just making something clear though: it’s not just about Gleisi Hoffmann. She, in that letter and in that visit, is there representing the Workers’ Party as a whole. A party that has time, and time, and time, and time again supported Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, two autocrats and dictators, despite being a party that deems itself a bastion of defense of democracy, human rights, and the common folk. Gonna put here a couple of paragraphs from an article written in El País in 2017, when the Workers’ Party supported another coup by Maduro, in which he dissolved Venezuela’s National Assembly:
After abandoning values and principles in the name of governability, after having sacrificed much of the precious social advances that defined Lula's mandates with the economic irresponsibility of Rousseff's management, after having engaged in corruption scandals that melted the party’s position as a moralizing force in Brazilian politics, the Workers’ Party now endangers its greatest legacy: a model of making politics and ruling the left entirely committed to democracy.
It is no small thing. It is a point of reference for our continent and for our historical time. In a Latin America obsessed for decades with the danger of a communist revolution and the installation of a totalitarian system, the PT's greatest success was to prove not only the democratic credentials of the left, but also the left's ability to make a good government and to deliver on its promises in a pragmatic, thoughtful, and responsible way. Under the leadership of Celso Amorim, Lula’s government has also demonstrated that it’s possible to strengthen progressive forces in the world with intelligent diplomacy based on principles and soft power, instead of a militant speech that closes any doors to dialogue. This is the left that we need in the 21st century. Indeed, history teaches us that this is the left Latin America always needed, but rarely encountered. An intelligent left. A reflexive left, with the courage for self-criticism. A left that always seeks to question and update its ideas to reinforce the fight for democracy.
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So yeah. The backlash isn’t only on Gleisi Hoffmann herself, but on the Workers’ Party as a whole, that has once again contradicted its democratic and pro-human rights discourse.
