New Delhi, November 24: Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for a new global governance that recognized the greater prominence of developing countries like India and Brazil. Lula, as he is popularly called, said that this included a permanent seat on the United National security Council for a Latin American country, an African country and India. "This is not the world that was at the end of World War II," Lula said in his Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture on Friday evening.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who introduced him, praised his rise from a shoeshine boy at the age of 12 to a much-loved two-term President, and used US President Barack Obama's words to describe him as "the most popular President in the world."
Speaking in Portuguese, Lula recalled the two countries' common stands at multilateral institutions in the past, including at the World Trade Organisation, and at climate change summits. He said that the Non Aligned Movement, which of late has been derided as an anachronistic gathering, had not only played an important role in its time but its principles remained fair and balanced; "history must do justice to NAM's legacy," Lula said.
Speaking of the economic crises in the US and the Eurozone, Lula said that bailouts were given to banks and companies, while there had been no bailing out of the common people. "History has shown that austerity is not only bitter, but ineffective," Lula said. "It is painful to watch the hopelessness of people in these countries, especially of the young," he said. Meanwhile structural errors like a deregulated banking system and financial speculation had not been addressed, Lula said.
Recalling that Nehru had said that crises force us to think, Lula said that it was time for a new compact between developing countries and financial institutions. "The world political order must reflect new realities," said Lula, adding that this new compact be based on the principle of inclusion. Lula spoke of the success of the Bolsa Familia conditional cash transfer project in Brazil, and said that he was proud of the historic social mobility that the bottom 50 per cent of Brazil was able to achieve under him "A similar path is being followed in India," Lula said.
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