Colombian President Gustavo Petro traveled to Brazil this Sunday morning to attend the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president, the Presidency reported.
Petro will arrive at the Brasilia airport accompanied by Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva, according to the schedule shared by his office, which will be the third time that the trade unionist assumes the Presidency of Brazil following winning the second round once morest his opponent, President Jair Bolsonaro.
After participating in the ceremony and listening to Lula’s first speech as president, Petro will participate in the protocol act of greetings from the international delegations to the new Brazilian head of state and will later hold a bilateral meeting with the president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Lula is part of the progressive axis, together with the Chilean Gabriel Boric and the Mexican Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom Petro seeks to build a new Latin American union bloc.
According to the information provided by his office, the president will return to Colombia on Monday, January 2, so in principle he is not scheduled to attend the reopening of the Tienditas bridge, on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, an event that was speculated Petro might attend along with his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, in what would be their second meeting since the Colombian president assumed the head of state.
In addition, the Colombian president’s trip comes one day following he announced a “bilateral ceasefire” with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the FARC dissidents and paramilitary groups that will be in force from January 1 to June 30, 2023.
