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Far-right Bolsonaro sells ‘new Brazil’ to Davos elite
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Skirting the first political
scandal of his new presidency, far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro will tout a
“new Brazil” when he addresses the world’s business elite in Davos on
Tuesday.
The president of Latin America’s biggest economy is giving the keynote
address at this year’s World Economic Forum, where warnings are mounting of
the dangers of a growth slowdown, yawning inequality and disastrous climate
change.
US President Donald Trump along with the leaders of France, Britain and
Zimbabwe have had to stay away from the Swiss ski resort as they fight
political fires back home.
A trip to Davos by US officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
was also cancelled by Trump. But organisers said Pompeo would now address the
conference by video-link from Washington on Tuesday, after Bolsonaro’s
speech.
Like Trump, the “Mr Clean” Bolsonaro surfed a populist wave to ride to
power, vowing an end to rampant corruption and a restoration of law and order
in Brazil.
But staging his first foreign trip as president, Bolsonaro has left behind
a scandal about suspicious payments involving his politician son Flavio
Bolsonaro, who denies any wrongdoing.
Focussing on his message at the WEF, Bolsonaro told reporters in Davos that
he would “give the broadest message possible of the new Brazil that is
presenting itself with our arrival in power”.
He said “Brazil is taking measures so that the world re-establishes
confidence in us, that our business returns to flourishing between Brazil and
the world, without being guided by ideology”.
“We will show that we are a country that is safe for investments,
especially in the area of agribusiness which is very important for us.”
But while Bolsonaro’s promises on investment and deregulation have wowed
the Brazilian stock market, he has also taken a page from the Trump playbook
in bashing China.
If such trade tensions worry many of the well-heeled Davos crowd, so does
the threat of planetary economic dislocation caused by climate change,
according to a WEF survey last week.
– Trump of the Tropics –
Marco Lambertini, director general of environmental group WWF, urged
Bolsonaro to heed concerns both abroad and at home about his government’s
stewardship of the Amazon rainforest.
“So don’t consider the environment an anti-development concept, and don’t
consider the environment as something that is against your own agenda of
developing a more stable Brazil,” he told AFP.
Preservation of the Amazon from logging by agribusinesses is a key plank of
the Paris accord aimed at reining in rising temperatures, experts say.
But a new analysis by the World Resources Institute said the world is on
course to miss its “best chance” of preventing runaway climate change, by
ensuring global greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2020.
Trump pulled out of Davos because of the US budget shutdown and then yanked
his entire delegation, removing any prospect of trade peacemaking in the Alps
with Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan.
The WEF week features an eclectic lineup of discussions devoted to issues
such as mindful parenting in the digital age, chronic loneliness and
harnessing artificial intelligence without destroying jobs.
It is drawing some 3,000 political and business figures, including 65
government leaders from Germany, Israel and elsewhere.
While the gathering high in the Swiss Alps is dedicated to networking and
schmoozing, the International Monetary Fund started the week with a downbeat
downgrade of its forecasts for global growth.
The IMF notably cited the US-China trade war, and Brexit clouds surrounding
Britain’s divorce from the European Union.
But while growth is slowing, aid charity Oxfam warned the Davos elite that
inequality around the world most certainly is not.
The wealth of the world’s 26 richest people is now equivalent to that of
the poorest half of humanity, Oxfam said, warning that such an imbalance was
stoking popular anger and undermining democracies around the world.
Three of those billionaires are attending Davos — Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates, China’s richest man Jack Ma and Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani.
BSS/AFP/RY/1601 hrs