Lula warns of the “critical moment” that democracy is going through and Boric defends that progressives cannot have a different yardstick
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has defended the need for democratic leaders to unite to give a “global response” to the threat of a “reactionary wave”, well coordinated and financed, that democracy is currently facing.
He did so on the occasion of the meeting ‘In defence of democracy. Fighting against extremism’ organised jointly with the President of Brazil, Luiz Inazio Lula da Silva, on the margins of the UN General Assembly with the aim of analysing “how to defend ourselves from the systematic attacks of this reactionary wave that is threatening all our democracies”.
“We see every day that these attacks are not an isolated phenomenon but have a transnational dimension that demands a coordinated response from all of us,” he stressed, hoping that this meeting will be the first of many others in the future and that “a global response can be coordinated to a phenomenon that is global but also has its national translation.”
Sánchez argued that “we must respond to the enemies of democracy with the same tenacity and the same coordination that they use to undermine democracy and with the strength of everything in which we far surpass them, our principles and our values.”
The loss of citizens’ confidence in democracy is due, in his opinion, to inequality, misinformation and the spread of hate speech –against which he has boasted of in the new action plan for democracy– and to the fact that among the far-right movements there is “good international coordination between their promoters and their political leaders.”
“We are facing powerful adversaries with important sources of funding that feed networks of contacts on a global scale,” he stressed, stressing that it is “a movement that does not recognize the election results, denies science and therefore climate change and manipulates concepts such as freedom,” he stressed.
“These are movements that promote hate speech, racism, xenophobia, question the participation of women in politics and in the socioeconomic affairs of our society and that by giving up the battle of ideas, what they do is try to dehumanize the political adversary.”
DEMOCRACY IS A MERE RITUAL
For his part, Lula has warned that “it is undeniable that democracy is today experiencing its most critical moment since the Second World War” and this is due, according to him, to the fact that “liberal democracy has proven insufficient and has frustrated the expectations of millions and millions of people.”
“It has become a mere ritual that we repeat every four or five years through elections, a model that works for big capital and that basically abandons workers to their fate, and this is not democratic,” he denounced. “Abundance for a few, hunger for many, this is what we see in the 21st century and this is the prelude to totalitarianism,” he added.
For Lula, “democracy in its fullness is the basis for promoting peaceful, fair and inclusive societies that are free from fear and violence and is fundamental for a world of peace and prosperity.” But, he added, “history has taught us that democracy cannot be imposed in any way” but that “its construction is specific to each people and each country, but to recover legitimacy we must rescue the whole essence and not just the form.”
In turn, the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, has emphasized that progressives should not have a different yardstick when denouncing autocratic regimes, while offering to host a future meeting of progressive leaders and the parties that support them in Santiago.
DO NOT JUDGE BASED ON POLITICAL “COLOR”
“Human Rights, the violation of Human Rights, and this is something that I think is worth insisting on, cannot be judged according to the color of the dictator on duty who violates them, or the president who violates them, whether his name is (Benjamin) Netanyahu in Israel or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, whether his name is (Daniel) Ortega in Nicaragua or Vladimir Putin in Russia, whether they define themselves as left or right or whatever,” he stressed.
In this sense, he has defended that “from the progressive sectors and to claim the strength of the left we have to be able to defend principles.” “And I think that is where we sometimes fail; we do not have the same yardstick to judge those who are supposed to be on our side,” he lamented.
Furthermore, Boric stressed the need to reflect on the appropriation of “certain issues” by the right.
