Ecuador: Will Luisa González, be Ecuador’s First Female President?

in the dynamic Ecuadorian political scenario, a figure has emerged that has captured the attention of many: Luisa González, the candidate of Revolución Ciudadana, the party of former president Rafael Correa.

Luisa González obtained 33.3% of the votes and will face businessman Daniel Noboa in the second round. Gonzalez held several positions during the presidency of Rafael Correa, whom she plans to appoint as advisor. She defines herself as “a revolutionary woman of peace”. Her closeness to the Catholic Church and her position on abortion.

Related:

Luisa González Is Ecuador’s Most Voted Presidential Candidate

After the failed presidency of Lenin Moreno –who governed between 2017 and 2021 mocking his past as a leader of Revolución Ciudadana, a force founded by Rafael Correa– and the chaotic government of banker Guillermo Lasso –who will end his term early–; a woman arrives as a favorite to the second electoral round for the first time in Ecuador’s history.

Luisa González, candidate of Revolución Ciudadana, obtained this Sunday 33.3% of the votes and will also seek to become the first female president of the country. “Ecuador requires peace, work, security, that we become free again”, she celebrated last night and called Ecuadorians to unite again.

Although until recently unknown to most, Gonzalez burst onto the political scene with the bold mission to “recover the homeland.”

“We call for the unity of all Ecuadorians: the private and public sector, all the forces of the country to build a vision of a country that will give us decent conditions for all”, said the presidential candidate.

Gonzalez, who a few weeks ago showed a voting intention of only 5%, emerged as the most voted candidate in a first electoral round crossed by violence with the murders of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and the correista leader Pedro Briones. “A revolutionary woman of peace”, this is how the lawyer and candidate of Revolución Ciudadana, born in Quito on November 22, 1977, defined herself. The candidate has already announced that, if she reaches the Carondelet Palace -as the government house is known in Ecuador-, she will have former President Rafael Correa as advisor.

The political career of Luisa González

Born in Quito, she became interested in politics and public service at a very young age. During her career, Luisa has worked hard to improve the quality of life of Ecuadorians, especially those in vulnerable situations.

The favorite for the second round on October 15 is a lawyer with a master’s degree in International Economics and Development from the Complutense University of Madrid, and held several positions during Correa’s presidency, among them, the head of the Ministry of Labor. Until 2007, she was a member of the Social Christian Party (PSC), but when Correa became president, Luisa became one of the closest leaders to the then president.

In 2021 she won a seat as a legislator as a candidate of Union for Hope, the alliance that hegemonized the Citizen Revolution movement. That was her last public position to make the leap to the presidential candidacy, for which she was elected in the internal of correismo on June 10, after the former vice president Jorge Glas rejected the nomination. Glas was detained for five years for a cause that from the correismo denounce as part of lawfare that advanced on the representatives of Latin American progessivism of the beginning of the century, among them, the president of Brazil, Lula Da Silva, and the Argentine vice-president Cristina Kirchner.

“We are going to take the bull by the horns and we are going to face the causes that generate violence and delinquency, such as hunger, poverty, lack of education, lack of opportunities”, assured González that June 10 in her nomination ceremony in the town of Portoviejo, capital of Manabí, birthplace of the candidate and bastion of Correism. 

Luisa González’s perspective on religion and abortion

Mother of two daughters, cycling fanatic, Gonzalez refused to wear a bulletproof vest during the campaign, after Villavicencio’s crime. “I have faith in God; he is the one who protects us,” she confided.  Perhaps it is this Catholicism that also leads her to oppose abortion, an issue in which the candidate does not see contradictions even from a pro-gay space such as Revolución Ciudadana. “No one has said that being a feminist or progressive is to be in favor of abortion,” she considered.

“During her career, she has worked tirelessly to improve the living conditions of her community and encourage citizen participation in political decision-making,” the candidate is described in the official profile posted on the page of the dissolved National Assembly.

Luisa González has stood out for her focus on issues such as education, health and economic development. She has proposed innovative policies and programs to strengthen the education system, guarantee access to quality health care, and encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.

In addition, Luisa González is known for her integrity and her ability to work as a team player. She has demonstrated outstanding leadership skills and the ability to build consensus for the benefit of Ecuadorian society. Her honesty and transparency are admirable qualities that make her a reliable candidate and close to the people.

Inflection EP26: US Torches Solomon Islands for Choosing China

December 14 2021

The US wants Solomon Islands to go against the obvious economic and social benefits that comes from having relations with China,

“Solomon Islands depends on just straight up foreign aid … certain times … anywhere between 50% and 60% of the Solomon Islands government budget comes from foreign aid.  This is not a sovereign country if more than half of all the money you spend is coming  from someone else; there’s always strings attached.  

What is China offering the Solomon Islands?  … number one, tourism;  it’s a no-brainer.  There’s so many  people in China, a lot of them are improving in terms of  economics, they have money to travel, they  want to travel and they will come to the  Solomon Islands in huge numbers, and they will lift that  country up. People will make money selling them things, accommodating them, bringing them around – transportation.  There will be infrastructure that you  can invest in and justify the investment  .. then education, training and building up industrial infrastructure so that the  Solomon Islands has more things that  they can trade.”

What human rights really look like

December 9 2010

Luis Arce Completes One Year at the Helm of Bolivia’s Government

Source: TeleSUR

November 8 2021

Bolivian President Luis Arce said, “We feel strengthened by the expressions of affection and the
 support we received from social organizations during the celebration of our first year in office”
| Photo: Twitter/@LuchoXBolivia

On November 8, 2020, Luis Arce took power before the Legislative Assembly with 55.11 percent of the votes.

Bolivian President, Luis Arce, offered a speech to the nation, within the framework of the inauguration of the first ordinary session of the Legislative Assembly (Parliament) for 2021-2022 and on the first anniversary of his assumption to the Bolivian Presidency.

Before the President’s speech, the Vice President, David Choquehuanca, referred to the popular demand for justice for the deaths and human rights violations and cases of racism during the de facto government of Jeanine Añez.

RELATED: Colombians Involved in Attempted Assassination of Luis Arce

In this regard, he indicated that what happened in 2020 compared to 2021 reflects irreversible change and stressed the need to use democratic means and the rule of law to banish fascism and other forms of extreme violence.

“2020 has warned us and taught us that political chaos, deaths, racism, abuse, corruption, injustices, violation of human rights is not the path of our plurinational system. It is the obligation of all of us to identify those responsible so that these events never happen again,” he said.

In this sense, he referred to the importance of justice to respect due process but identifying those responsible so that the facts do not go unpunished.

“A country without justice is a nation submerged in disorder and chaos; justice has to seek the truth, the people need to know the truth, the people demand justice,” he said.

Luis Arce, on his part, presented before the Legislature the results of his first 12 months in office. Concerning his administration, he said that 54.4 percent of the Bolivian population over 18 years of age is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, thanks to the application of 7.9 million doses of the more than 15.4 million free antigens distributed.

At the same time, he noted that in the third wave of the pandemic, immunization was massive, reaching 64 percent of first doses and 54 percent in second doses, in addition to implementing active epidemiological surveillance.

The Bolivian head of state recalled that when he took office in November 2020, the country had a deep health crisis due to the coronavirus.

“In the year of our democratically elected government, 7.9 million doses were administered, including first, second, third and single doses. As of November 2021, 54.4% of the population over 18 years of age has the complete vaccination schedule against COVID19.”

“In Bolivia, COVID-19 arrived in March 2020, bringing pain, mourning and impotence in the face of a clear inability to manage the health crisis of the de facto government, the lack of medical supplies, medicines, oxygen, massive PCR tests, trained personnel resulted in shocking figures of lethality, in a scenario that, despite having adopted rigid and flexible quarantines, did not foresee hope for the Bolivian people,” he commented.

To face this situation, the President said that three lines of action were implemented, including free mass testing, free vaccination, and strengthening the health system at the state level.

“With these actions, we went from a lethality rate of 6.2 percent in the first wave to a lethality that did not exceed 2.7 percent in the second and third waves. At the beginning of this fourth wave, the lowest levels of the entire pandemic were recorded at 0.96 percent in November 2021,” he said.

Arce continued his speech, outlining the work of the Government to favor pregnant women with the Juana Azurduy Bonus. He added that through the Unified Health System and the National Intercultural Community Family Health Policy, the number of births attended by qualified personnel increased.

He also referred to the reestablishment of sports institutions taken over after the de facto Government, through the reopening of centers, incentives for sports practice and economic support.

He also highlighted the opening of the school year in February 2021, with 38.5 percent of educational institutions in face-to-face mode, increasing to 58.7 percent in October. “If to that modality we add the semi-presential classes, we would have a total of 84.1 percent of the total of the country’s educational units under these two modalities, which means a substantive improvement of the educational process in our country in times of pandemic,” he evidenced.

Luis Arce also referred to the economic reconstruction measures to seek gradual growth. “The measures implemented responded favorably, achieving positive results for our economy, reducing the depth of the crisis that in the second and third quarter of 2020 hit bottom, with accumulated falls of -12.9 percent and -12.6 percent, respectively,” he said.

The head of the Bolivian Government was sworn in on Sunday, November 8, 2020, at the Plurinational Legislative Assembly and with national support of 55.11 percent at the polls. From his entry into the Presidency, he implemented measures to counteract the political, economic, educational and health crises in search of the reconstruction of Bolivia and its stability after the coup d’état of 2019

University in central Cuba graduates new professionals from Angola and Haiti

Source: Cuban News Agency

Date July 21 2021

CAMAGUEY, Cuba, Jul 21 (ACN) The University of Camagüey (UC) “Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz” graduated 34 new professionals from Angola and Haiti, nations with which Cuba has friendly relations and education cooperation agreements.

The graduates represent a valuable force for those countries in the fields of Veterinary Medicine, Law, Electrical Engineering, Architecture, Civil Engineering and Chemical Engineering, according to UC’s website.

Dayana Figueredo Stewart, head of the International Students Department, said that it has been a different, non-presential process due to COVID-19, but no less rigorous than usual.

“The students submitted their diploma thesis online and two members of a team made up of their tutors, opponents and jury members evaluated them and gave them the relevant grades,” she added.

In the first university established in Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution, the foreign scholarship holders received a general preparation through scientific, cultural and sports activities.

Britain: Tories forced to u-turn after wave of student protests

Source: Marxist.com
August 18 2020

by Jack Tye Wilson

After a weekend of militant protests and online campaigning against the A-level results fiasco, the government has backed down, scrapping the infamous ‘algorithm grades’ for both A-Level and GCSE students. This represents a victory for young people. But their anger will not subside so easily.

In the immediate aftermath of the exams fiasco – which saw close to 40% of A-level grades in England downgraded from their teachers’ predictions – Tory education secretary Gavin Williamson dug his heels in.

Williamson’s immediate response was to defend the grading system as the “fairest possible way” to assess students. Later, on Saturday, he stubbornly declared that there would be “no U-turn” and “no change”.

Backed into a corner

As students gathered in their thousands in a number of cities over the weekend, the cracks began to show in the ranks of the Conservative Party. Over 20 Tory MPs raised concerns about the grading system, and Tory MP Simon Hoare said that the situation was “beyond a joke” and “smacks of naive incompetence”.

Even members of Ofqual – England’s exams regulator – were denouncing their own algorithm! Sources from the exam ‘watchdog’ rightly pointed out that their grading system had led to a “hemorrhaging of public trust”. They urged Downing Street to follow Scotland’s lead and scrap the calculated grades altogether.

Boris Johnson responded to the situation in his typical fumbling manner. The Prime Minister declared that both Ofqual and Williamson had his full support – despite each being at loggerheads with the other!

Under fire from all sides, the government had no choice but to back down. This U-turn serves to show the immense power that young people have when they organise, take to the street, and make their voices heard.

The chair of Ofqual, Roger Taylor, even admitted as much in his grovelling apology on BBC News. “What changed was seeing young peoples’ distress and anxiety” Taylor stated. “Seeing this we realised we had taken the wrong road.”

Militancy pays!

It should come as no surprise that the systematic downgrading of students led to unfathomable levels of anxiety and distress. But far from this cowering students, these anxieties about the future – and an already seething resentment towards the Tories – exploded into hardened struggle.

Despite protests being called at the last minute, thousands gathered outside of the Department of Education HQ in Whitehall over the weekend. Chants of “justice for the working class” and “fuck the system” filled the streets. Student networks coordinating protests have since mushroomed.

This display of anger shows that young people see straight through the claims that this was simply a ‘mistake’ or a problem with this or that grading system. The class nature of this latest injustice is plain for all to see. This debacle is the product of a deeply classist education system, which is set up to fail working-class youth

Inequalities in education

The education system ultimately reflects the needs of the capitalist system. Private schools simply would not exist if they did not confer an advantage onto those that come from more affluent backgrounds.

Similarly, those students that are set up to fail – year in year out – are what is required to keep the so-called ‘unskilled’ workforce in precarious, poorly-paid employment.

This reversal does nothing to address the deep-seated inequality in Britain’s classrooms. Indeed, this Tory U-turn itself reveals the problems at the heart of the education system, as BTECs and other vocational qualifications are not included in the government’s latest decision.

We must demand that no student is left behind. The fact that the grading algorithm had to factor in attainment gaps between schools in the first place is a damning indictment of a broken system.

The truth is that the class divide begins at birth – and widens with every hurdle that the working class faces in order to achieve the same opportunities as those born into wealth.

After years of cuts, severe underfunding, and ever-inflating classroom sizes in state schools, the Tories would be mistaken to think they can wash their hands clean with one rushed policy change and a hollow apology.

And let us not forget that Centre Assessed Grades are far from immune to the biases that were present in the algorithm grades. Teachers from state schools are often pressured into not predicting grades that are ‘too high’ for their students. As a result, classism will inevitably remain present, even with the grades that students will now receive.

There is still much to be done to uproot the class divide in our schools. Ultimately, under capitalism, working-class students will always be at a disadvantage.

But this scandal has opened many people’s eyes to the fact that meritocracy is a myth – that hard work is not enough to overcome the systemic inequalities facing the working class.

Join the Marxists!

These latest events are another potent blow against this chaotic Tory government. And this, in turn, should give confidence to activists looking to fight back.

Young people – often a reliable barometer for the moods in society – have seen the power they possess by taking to the streets and demanding an end to injustice. This must now be a spark for a wider movement of workers and youth, against this rotten Tory government and their entire rigged system.

If this is what can be achieved with a weekend of hastily-arranged demonstrations, imagine what could be achieved if students joined up with the organised working class to create a mass fighting force.

We must continue the fightback against the ravaging cuts that have been carried out against our class. The first step must be to reach out to the teacher’s unions and labour movement at large. After all, teachers have already been on the frontline in the battle against Tory recklessness. And today’s students are tomorrow’s workers.

The measure of any decent society is the way it is able to nurture and prepare the next generation. A society that cannot offer young people a future is fundamentally flawed.

In the last instance, that is the lived and crushing experience of students and young workers today. With the recent NEU campaigning and UCU strike action as a backdrop, students are realising that organised, united, and militant struggle is our most powerful weapon.

The struggle for a free and fair education system – one that does away with classism and competition – is inextricably tied to the struggle for socialism. That is what the Marxist Student Federation is fighting for. Join us in the fightback!

Originally published 17 August at socialist.net |

167th Anniversary of José Martí’s birth celebrated in Jamaica

Source:  Minrex

January 28 2020

Kingston, Jamaica, 28 January 2020. 

The celebration in Jamaica of the 167th anniversary of the birth of our National Hero, José Martí, took place at the Technical School that bears his name, with the presence of officials from the Cuban State Mission and members of the board of the Association of Cubans Resident in Jamaica, who were invited for the occasion.

This institution, located in Spanish Town, was a gift that the people and Government of Cuba gave to the people and Government of Jamaica 43 years ago.

This January 28, the morning devotion ceremony at the School was conducted entirely in Spanish and the Simple Verses of the apostle of Cuban independence were recited or sung to the sound of La Guantanamera.

Speaking on behalf of the Cuban State Mission, Mr. Ulises Calvo, Head of the Consular Office, highlighted the qualities of José Martí as a revolutionary leader, teacher of generations and defender of the most advanced ideas and values ​​of his time.

Regarding the School and what it represents, he said: “There are many things that make it unique: its architecture, the combination of study and work as part of learning; the level of Spanish language proficiency and the vast knowledge about Cuba that teachers provide to students; the murals with portraits of Martí and Fidel … everything I see here reminds me a lot of my school in Cuba […] We are grateful and proud to see the hard work carried out by the staff, the students and the community in general to honour the name of this school and the eternal friendship between our two sister islands.”

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the visitors paid tribute to José Martí at the bust that honours his memory. They toured the teaching facilities and exchanged with students, teachers and members of the board of directors.

 

Burkina Faso: Thomas Sankara Lives in the Memory of Africans

Source:  TeleSUR
December 21 2019

Photograph of Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso.
| Photo: Twitter/ @comunistaabdito

This 21st of December marks the 70th birth anniversary of the Pan-Africanist revolutionary who is said to have been the “Che Guevara” of Africa.

On December 21st, African peoples remember the birth of Thomas Sankara, a Marxist revolutionary who became the icon of a collective struggle against the oppression from imperialist nations.

RELATED: Burkina Faso Re-Establishes Diplomatic Relations With China

Thomas Sankara was born in 1949 in the French colony known at that time by the name of Upper Volta, which he would later rename Burkina Faso, which means “the land of upright people.”

While his parents came from a middle class, Sankara would not have been able to afford the costs of a college education. As a result, he chose to enter the military at the age of 17.

Once he began his military career, he contacted Adama Toure, a civilian professor who was known for having progressive, and even radical, ideas.

He invited a few of his brightest students to join informal discussions about international politics, which would have led Sankara to familiarize himself with debates on the African liberation movements.

In 1971, he was sent for officer training to Madagascar where he witnessed several popular uprisings and first read the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, which profoundly influenced his thinking.

Years later, Sankara joined the “Communist Officers’ Group,” a secret organization that brought together young officers who were seeking deep social changes in their country.

In 1981, he held his first public position as Secretary of State for Information. A year later, however, Sankara resigned because he disagreed with what he called policies against workers.​​​​​​​

Sankara became President in 1983 at the age of 33 as an effect of a coup d’état organized by Captain Blaise Compaore, who later would have led another coup against the Marxist revolutionary.​​​​​​​

Anti-imperialist

From the presidency, the African leftist leader promoted an anti-imperialist revolution, whose main policies were focused on promoting reforestation, securing safe water, averting famine, and providing education and health to all the population.

During his four years of government, the charismatic leader acquired greater visibility in the context of African international politics.

At the 25th Conference of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), for example, he harshly criticized external indebtedness, which he considered to be one of the new instruments used by developed countries to control the peoples of the world and keep them plunged into poverty.​​​​​​​

“Sankara’s foreign policy was largely focused on anti-imperialism, with his government shunning all foreign aid. He insisted on debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB),” local outlet

The leftist leader also privileged the defense of the Non-Aligned Movement, rejected U.S. interference in developing countries, condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, sympathized with Cuba and Nicaragua, and ​​​​​​​expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

During his short but fruitful administration, Sankara promoted an unprecedented policy to foster gender equity and free women from the bonds of traditional culture.

“Woman source of life, but also woman object. Mother but a servile maid. Nurse woman but woman excuse. Worker in the field and at home, but figure without face and voice. Woman hinge, woman confluence, but woman chained, woman shadow in the shadow of man,” he said.

After Sankara’s murder in 1987, which his former friend described as just an “accident,” the new regime proudly proclaimed that its main policy objective would be to “rectify” the Burkinabe revolution.

Socialism must be anti-racist

Source:  Granma

November 22 2019

Steps taken after the triumph of the Revolution, in January of 1959, dealt a devastating blow to the structural supports of racism • The other great battle is to implement educational and cultural methods that contribute to a new subjectivity

Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu

 

Work by Cuban artist Raúl Martínez. Photo: Granma

Sitting on a book fair shelf, the writing on a t-shirt caught my attention: Races do not exist; racism yes. In 1946, Fernando Ortiz wrote The Deception of Race, a key essay in the evolution of anthropological thought that led him to describe the Cuban ethnos in terms of full integration. He scientifically and conceptually dismantled the application of racial standards to classify human beings, and attempt to justify the superiority of one over another on the basis of skin color.

Half a century later, when the vanguard of the scientific community deciphered the human genome, the precocious assertion made by Ortiz was once again confirmed: there is only one race, the human race. External physical traits are determined by only 1% of our genes, thus it is absolutely unscientific and fallacious to attribute intellectual abilities or aptitudes to women and men of a certain pigmentation.

By that time, genetic studies of the Cuban population had advanced in the investigation of factors that affect human health. A rigorous investigation, led by Dr. Beatriz Marcheco, yielded, beyond the proposed initial objectives, a revealing result: “All Cubans,” emphasized the doctor after reporting the irrefutable data, “without a doubt” are mixed race, regardless of the color of the skin we have.”

Racism is a cultural construction that, in the Cuban case, is based on the heritage of a colonial past and the exploitation of African slave labor, forcefully brought to the island. The European white, who occupied the apex of the social pyramid, in the plantation economy, not only exploited and oppressed slaves, but also promoted the myth of racial inferiority of Blacks and their descendants. A myth that was accepted by most light-skinned Creoles and marked social practices during the colonial era, and later in the years of the neocolonial republic, a phenomenon linked to class divisions.

In a 1950 lecture, Ortiz also said, “In Cuba the most serious racism is undoubtedly against Blacks. Racisms are more aggravated against Blacks, in places where they are, or were, socially suppressed and some want to perpetuate this dependent condition. The blackest thing about being black lies not in the darkness of one’s skin, but in one’s social condition. The definition of black as a human type, as it is generally known and considered as the target of prejudice, departs from anthropology to enter politics. This must be done more for its social impact than its congenital nature. Blacks owe their blackness less to their dark ancestors, and more to their white contemporaries. Black is not so much about being born black but rather about being socially deprived of light. Being black is not only being black, but eclipsed and denigrated, as well.”

The revolutionary transformations that began after the January 1959 victory addressed this situation and largely reversed it. Many of the measures taken in those years dealt a devastating blow to the structural supports of racism.

On several occasions, Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro publicly aired the issue. On March 29, 1959, when speaking during an event in Güines, he said: “We are a people of all colors and of no color; a people constituted of different racial components; how are we going to commit the stupidity and absurdity of harboring the discrimination virus? Here, in this crowd, I see whites, and I see blacks, because this is our people. The people are white, black, yellow, and this must be Cuba. This is what should prevail among us.”

However, the destruction of the foundation that gave rise to institutionalized and structural racism in the pre-revolutionary era was not accompanied by a transformation of subjectivity. It is not enough to proclaim equal rights and equal opportunity, to condemn acts of discrimination, if work is not done to change the mentality.

There are two discriminations

The historical leader of our Revolution, in the essential book One Hundred Hours with Fidel (2006), stated much later to Ignacio Ramonet: “We were naive enough to believe that establishing total, absolute equality before the law would put an end to discrimination. Because there are two discriminations, one that is subjective and one that is objective… The Revolution – despite the rights and guarantees achieved for all citizens of any ethnicity or origin – has not achieved the same success in the fight to eradicate differences in the social and economic status of the country’s black population. Blacks do not live in the best houses, they are still performing difficult and sometimes lower paying jobs, and fewer are receiving family remittances in foreign currency than their white compatriots. But I am satisfied with what we are doing to discover the causes, which, if we do not resolutely fight them, could tend to prolong marginalization in successive generations.”

The other great battle is to utilize educational and cultural methods that contribute, sooner rather than later, to this new subjectivity. At the same time, we cannot live with attitudes that, consciously or unconsciously, reveal the persistence of prejudices, evident in various areas of daily life, from work environments to television programs.

It is not possible to allow, for example, that in the essential non-state service sector, the hiring of young white women obviously predominates. In this case, sexism and racism join hands.

Nor is it possible to ignore, in a dialogue broadcast on television, that a black dancer is referred to as “blue” or that the presence of dancers of various skins colors in the country’s principal companies is described as “mulattocracy,” because when such things are taken lightly – irresponsibly, without thinking -sensibilities are injured.

The road is long, we know this, but it must be traveled step by step, without pause. On more than one occasion, over the years, Army General Raúl Castro has addressed the need to stimulate and promote the role of women and blacks and mixed race Cubans in the political, social and economic life of the country, and in the improvement of our social model. In the constitutive session of the National Assembly of People’s Power Ninth Legislature, April 18, 2018, after noting progress, he insisted that work must continue, and made a call to definitively resolve inherited problems related to the issue: “Things must be thought out,” he stated, “not just said and left to God’s goodwill. They are implemented or they are not implemented, insisting, looking for new methods, avoiding mistakes so we are not criticized in such a noble effort, and going back to think again and again, about another solution when we fail to solve the problem.”

Let us think and act accordingly. Let us recall a central concept expressed by that remarkable revolutionary intellectual who was Fernando Martínez Heredia: “The struggle for the deepening of socialism in Cuba must be anti-racist.”

‘Brazil Needs More Education, Not More Guns’, Lula Warns

Source:  TeleSUR
May 11 2019

Former President Lula da Silva at the National Coordination of Education
Workers Congress in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 12, 2019. | Photo: EFE

In an interview aired Friday by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva warned that his country’s problems will not be solved by governmental decisions that facilitate the use of weapons instead of promoting education.

RELATED:  BBC to Broadcast Lula’s Interview Banned by Local Brazilian TV

The Workers’ Party leader said Bolsonaro, “barbarously defends an armed, police state. He only makes that firing gesture. In his head, a weapon solves everyone’s problem. He has just authorized farmers can use guns and shoot anyone they want.” Lula added the current head of state “is sick and believes that Brazil’s problems will be solved with weapons. Brazil’s problems will be solved with books, with schools,” stressed the left-leaning politician.

The criticism came just days after former captain Bolsonaro signed a decree authorizing truck drivers, legislators, journalists, private security agents, lawyers and others to carry weapons in public places. This executive order will allow some 19.1 million citizens to request firearm licenses, according to Souda Paz Institute, an NGO dedicated to promoting a peace culture in Brazil.

Nationwide strike

On Wednesday, the current far-right administration also announced it would “block” 30 percent of the national budget already allocated to universities and research institutes from receiving their funs. This budget cut immediately moved thousands of Brazilian professors, students and scientists to protest and plan for a ationwide strike against social security reforms set for May 15.

“For Lula, education was an investment and not an expense. In 2010, upon leaving the Presidency, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva inaugurated the Teofilo Otoni campus in Minas Gerais. In his speech, he recalled his government’s maxim about education.”

Regarding the repression of young people and students, Lula pointed out in the exclusive interview that “for the wellbeing of Brazil, I hope [Bolsonaro] learns. … Instead of talking nonsense, Bolsonaro should say the following: ‘I will finish my term being better than Lula, I will create more universities, I will invest more in science and technology, I will enroll more children in school’.”

Imprisoned without evidence

During the interview, the 73-year-old politician and political prisoner answered several questions about the corruption allegations used to send him to jail for eight years, down from his original 12-year sentenced ruled on in 2018.

“The only thing that interests me is to prove my innocence and I will fight for it until my life’s last days,” Lula said and commented that, besides being politically motivated, his trial was wrought with legal irregularities. No actual evidence against the ex-president was ever presented in court, just testimonies against him.

“[The Human Rights, Family and Women Minister] Damares echoes Bolsonaro: minors are learning to use weapons without judicial authorization. The families demand it. Which families, minister? Those from the hills and slums? Now the motto is ‘arm one another’?”

Since April 7, 2018, Lula has been imprisoned at a Curitiba’s federal prison convicted of allegedly receiving a luxurious beach apartment from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company in exchange for contracts with Petrobras, a state-owned oil company.

Lula recalled that many opposition politicians wrongly thought he was going to leave Brazil before being arrested.

“I decided to stay in my country. If they want me in Curitiba, I will be there,” he said and thanked “those wonderful people who are out there,” referring to the thousands of Brazilians supporters who have been in permanent mobilization and solidarity since his imprisonment in April 2018.

Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court recently ruled to allow Lula to be interviewed. This was his first broadcast interview originally set to be aired on RedeTV, but the Brazilian media outlet changed course last week, allegedly pressured by the Bolsonaro administration.