– South America walks with its head high, says Lula
OUTGOING Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, stressed the need for greater integration among members of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) at its fourth regular summit here Friday, pledging to stand behind Guyana’s chairmanship of the bloc for the next year.
At the summit opening Friday morning at the Guyana International Convention Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, he said President Bharrat Jagdeo knows how to conduct the work of integration of South America according to the aspirations of the people.
Emphasising the need for collective actions, President Lula said, “none of our countries have the ability to be prosperous without all of us being prosperous and so our future is within UNASUR.”
He pointed to the previous lack of knowledge and mistrust among countries which resulted in fights among Heads-of-State, noting that this scenario has changed with leaders having achieved the union which their predecessors tried to accomplish.
South America is no longer a geographic concept but a global player networking around a broad project of integration, he said in his address.
For Lula, one of the key architects of UNASUR, the union has become a political reality and it is materialising the dream of the region’s liberators and leaders.
“We are overcoming nausea and resistance that happened during 200 years of our independent political life and have created betterment for us to follow the road towards unity,” Lula said.
He recalled that ‘experts’, who did not have any knowledge about the region, once dictated the rules and countries had agreements that were submitted to them which separated growth from income distribution. As a result, countries were led into recession and unemployment and from macro economic chaos they de-qualified the policies and actions of the state and despised the notion of national sovereignty.
However, today South American countries are not seen any more as just a periphery that is distant and full of problems but as the solution in a world where there is an economic crisis, particularly in the economies of developed countries, he said.
South America is an essential part of the solution of the major economic crisis of the last decades, he said.
This was a crisis that “we did not foster and that was born in the core of world capitalism due to the anarchy of the markets and of the lack of responsible rulers that did not know how to regulate these financial markets”, he stated.
Lula declared that the morals today are not shaped any more by a few developed countries as without the developing countries, there would not have been the possible opening of a new expansion cycle that would combine growth, fighting poverty and hunger, reducing social equality and environmental conservation.
He posited that these should be the main priorities of the new international agenda and now is the time to rebuild global institutions on a more legitimate representative and democratic base where a multi-polar world is being built.
He said there is a need for flexible and fast institutions to network common initiatives in this ambitious process of integration in South America, where 400 million men and women benefit today from an exceptional phase of economic growth.
The grouping’s programmes of social inclusion have helped to diminish poverty and equality in the region, he added.
“They constitute an enormous productive aid and a great market for consumer goods. Our industries, universities and scientific and research centres make us closer to the great advantage that humanity have been experiencing in the past decades. We are today one of the major points of attraction of foreign direct investment”, he said.
Intra-regional trade has grown much but South America still needs to make it more balanced, taking all legal access to markets where countries are consolidating, he said.
More than eliminating tariffs and non-tariff barriers, the creation of protective integration chain between state enterprises and the development of partnerships in strategic sector such as energy and air space industry, ship building industries, and drug industries should be stimulated, he added.
Referring to his country and Argentina, Lula said that when the two countries attended the recent G20 meeting, they had exceptional economic growth and job creation, noting that Brazil does not owe the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and that in itself is determination.
Democracy is active on the continent of South America as it has societal participation with democratically-elected leaders participating in making decisions for UNASUR through a common commitment to democracy, rebuilding harmony and mutual respect through the common exercise of political agreement, he said.
“UNASUR is open to all its neighbours and I insist the need for us to improve our institutions so that we can implement the policies that will be passed and so that we can expand very quickly to innovative projects that are of great need in priority areas”, Lula said.
He noted that the proposed Energy Integration Treaty put on the table has elements that would allow for an objective work plan with complete proposals and reachable goals.
Lula declared that South America cannot at the same time be the region in the world that has the greatest energy potential and be the one that still suffers.
“We live in one of the most mutual region in the world and we are building a regional ambition of defences that is based on common principles in respect to national sovereignty, to the self determination of the people and the integrity of the state and non- intervention in domestic issues,” he emphasised.
“We learned how to respect each other; we learned how to live democratically with diversity amongst ourselves,” President Lula said, turning his attention to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who he said, no one would have imagined, would be in the same room together five months ago.
At this, President Chavez left his seat and went with open arms to President Santos, who welcomed him with a warm embrace. The gesture received a standing ovation from the gathering in the Guyana International Conference Centre.  (Chavez and Santos agreed in August to restore diplomatic relations after Chavez cut ties in July month in response to Colombia’s allegations that Venezuela was harbouring left-wing rebels.)
President Lula called the brief interruption “the miracle of politics” and said that a review of South America in the year 2000 to the South America of today would show the positive changes.
“We would see the great progress that happened of the people that were elected to develop social programmes,” President Lula said.
Brazil is today the world’s eighth largest economy and Lula said he is very proud of the growth of South American economies, particularly the process of job creation which led to 2,409,000 new jobs between January and September.
While in the developed world a number of difficulties were faced in this regard, Lula spoke of the hypocrisy on their part of finding the remedy to solve the crisis in other countries except their own.
“How many times have we travelled around the world and any third rate secretary would look at a President of South America and would dare to say what we should do… today they don’t care to give us the recipe because they know that we are like them but our difference is that we have much more sovereignty and self determination than we had ten years ago”, Lula said.
He added that while his attendance at the summit was not for a confrontational agenda, it was necessary to make the point that South America has learned how to walk with its head high.
“We learn how to love our people, to give priority to our country. Our Latin America is poor because for centuries we had elites who valued what came from abroad”, he said.

(GOVERNMENT INFORMATION AGENCY)