With the hyperactivity that characterizes him, and via his own cell phone, Sergio Massa received the most important message from the region that could have reached him. It was in the early hours of this Monday (23), shortly after the results of the polls that confirmed the presidential election in the second round, on November 19, between Massa and Milei. “Immense, my friend”, wrote Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who, without making it public until now, congratulated in his own way the presidential candidate with the most votes in the first round of the Argentine presidential election.
Minutes before, the chief minister of the Social Communication Secretariat of the neighboring country, Paulo Pimenta, had sent a message of congratulations to Massa. He published photos with Lula, Massa and Argentine president Alberto Fernández.
The Brazilian government had until now avoided expressing any preference in the Argentine election. But Lula couldn’t take it. The PT leader became friends with Alberto Fernández when he went to visit him in prison in Curitiba and did not hesitate to embrace and bless the presidential candidacy of Economy Minister Sergio Massa.
The Brazilian president never responded to Javier Milei’s controversial and repeated insults, but he was always concerned about what he openly called the growth of an “ultra-right” in Argentina.
Regarding the result of Sunday’s election (22), Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad told the Reuters news agency that his government was concerned about a possible presidential victory for Milei.
“It’s natural that I’m (worried). A person whose flag is to break with Brazil, a relationship built over centuries, is worrying. That’s natural. It would worry anyone… Because in general in international relations you don’t ideologize the relationship”, said Minister Haddad, in what represented the first strong reaction from Lula’s government, which the libertarian calls “angry communist” and “socialist with a totalitarian vocation”. .
Furthermore, in the flow of electoral promises, the leader of the A Libertad Avanza party placed Brazil on the same level as China, threatening to cut relations with both countries if he was elected president, because they were governed by “communism”.
This Sunday, the day of the first round of the presidential election, while Milei received Eduardo Bolsonaro – deputy and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro –, Sergio Massa discreetly received Alexandre Pupo Quintino, collaborator of Lula’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of the advisory team Special from Palácio do Planalto, Celso Amorim.