A triumphant Dilma Rousseff with her arms upraised is the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek. As if the headline “Where women are winning” were not enough, the lead story is entitled “Don’t mess with Dilma.” Regardless of whether this article was placed or is a mere coincidence (as alleged by the Brazilian presidential press department), the influential United States magazine is bang on — Dilma seems at the cusp of global power.
That power will be on display in New York this week. The Brazilian leader will be kicking off the 66th General Assembly of the United Nations. That also makes her, as the Brazilian media never weary in pointing out, the “first woman in world history” to inaugurate a General Assembly. Although Brazil, by virtue of being the first country to enter the UN, has been delivering the opening speech since 1945, Dilma has not been taking this lightly. She has been in New York since Sunday with an agenda calculated to flaunt this empowerment to both the Brazilian and US press.
Simply running over the list of her bilateral meetings suffices to show that she plays in the big league — Barack Obama (US) and Felipe Calderón (México) yesterday, Nicolas Sarkozy (France), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Ollanta Humala (Peru), Juan Manuel Santos (Colombia) and David Cameron (United Kingdom) today. A contrast with the slender agenda chosen by Cristina Kirchner for her 35 hours in New York — a reluctantly conceded bilateral meeting with Piñera and another with Haitian President Michel Martelly.
As for Dilma, as if her seven bilateral meetings were not enough, she joined in two of the UN “theme” forums on Monday — in the one concerning chronic non-contagious diseases, Dilma advocated exempting drugs against diabetes, hypertension and cancer from patent royalties (as has already been done for AIDS).
Heavy skirts
But she must surely have missed her neighbour Cristina in the forum on Women’s Political Participation in Democracy, planned and directed by Michelle Bachelet, the head of UN Women since she stopped being president of Chile. Apart from the Chilean and the Brazilian, Monday’s “heavy skirts” photo included the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Catherine Ashton and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (on Dilma’s right). Saudades (that Brazilian word for nostalgia and sadness) no doubt for Cristina who four Septembers ago (and the month before presidential elections, just like now) filled the pages of Time magazine with an interview in which she was compared both to the then presidential hopeful Hillary and to Evita Perón. And today? “You’ ve come a long way, baby”, could be one answer. “The world has really changed”, could be another.
Dilma’s New York agenda has even more chapters. On the one hand, the academic — the Woodrow Wilson International Centre honoured her yesterday with its Public Services Prize. The cultural, on the other — in her first two days in the Big Apple, she chose to visit the MoMa and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She too could not resist shopping, although faithful to her intellectual style, she spent half an afternoon at Rizzoli’s book-shop on the corner of 5th Avenue and 67th Street. Dilma also has her strategic-nuclear chapter — today’s high-level meeting on Nuclear Security. It remains to be seen whether Brazil will lay on the table its current doubts over opening the Angra dos Reis IIII nuclear power plant and pressing ahead with those projected for the Northeast region.
The speech
But perhaps the crux will be the content of her inaugural speech this morning when she will become “the first woman in world history” to open a General Assembly. As is already traditional, Brazil will call for the end of the US embargo against Cuba and for the Security Council to expand its permanent membership in favour of emerging heavyweights (such as Brazil, for example). President Rousseff will also refer to the critical global economic and financial situation and will defend sustainable development policies (apart from emphasizing that 95 percent of Brazil’s reserves of US$350 billion are in US Treasury bonds, which turns our neighbour into a key player for Washington finances).
The fourth issue — already announced by Itamaraty Foreign Ministry — is support for Palestine’s candidacy to enter the United Nations as its 194th member. While Brazil was the country which kickstarted recognition of a Palestinian State within the pre-1967 frontiers in Latin America (immediately followed by Argentina), President Rousseff met up with Palestinian Ambassador Ibrahim Alzebren before heading out to New York. According to the newspaper O Estado, the Palestinian “ended up convincing Dilma.”
This “convincing” is crucial since officially Itamaraty backs the initiatives of the Quartet on Middle East Peace (the US, Russia, the EU and UN), which is now desperately seeking dialogue (suspended in August, 2010) between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, while the Palestinians have submitted their request for UN entry, which the US has already announced it would veto.
If Dilma places too much emphasis on supporting Palestine’s UN entry (whether as a full member or as an observer state, a halfway house which already commands 139 votes), this would fall within the contradictory (not to say tautological) lines of Brazilian foreign policy installed during the Lula presidencies — namely, “preventive diplomacy for pacific solutions.” With that in mind, Brazil did not spare itself embarrassments in its dicey intervention during the nuclear conflict with Iran and Lula had to grin and bear it when trying to mediate between Palestine and Israel. Indeed the contradiction has gone so far that although Dilma promised to defend human rights at an international level, Brazil has yet to condemn government repression during the Arab Spring and the wholesale slaughters of the Gaddafi régime — nor did she ever support the Libyan rebels or pronounce a word against the excesses in Syria.
While waiting for Dilma’s words, Brazil is also awaiting the arrival of Newsweek magazine with her consecrated on the cover. Its distribution is delayed by a post strike. Goes with the job. Or with power, which cannot control everything.
buenosairesherald.com/By: Carolina Barros