President Jair Bolsonaro will skip the G20 summit next week in Indonesia, the Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Brazilian Report.
Brazil’s delegation in Bali will be led by Foreign Minister Carlos França. Economy Minister Paulo Guedes will also skip the meeting, being represented by International Affairs secretary Marco Aurélio Rocha instead.
Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesperson for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, last week said 17 G20 leaders had confirmed they will attend the summit, although he did not specify which ones. The no-show list, however, has since become public, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as Mr. Bolsonaro.
Presidents Joe Biden of the U.S. and Xi Jinping of China will attend. The two will have a bilateral meeting on Monday amid escalating tensions over Taiwan. It will be their first in-person encounter since Mr. Biden took office early last year.
The only Latin American president at the G20 in Indonesia will be Argentina’s. President Alberto Fernández will travel to Bali, where he is to hold a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping. The 17th G20 Leaders’ Summit will occur on November 15 and 16.
Bolsonaro in seclusion
Since losing the election to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on October 30, President Bolsonaro has kept a low profile, making only two public appearances so far.
On November 1, he delivered a two-minute speech from the presidential residence in which he failed to congratulate Lula or explicitly concede. On the next day, he recorded a video calling upon demonstrators to stop blocking roads, despite saluting their protests.
Thousands of pro-Bolsonaro supporters blocked roads nationwide after the election, calling for a military coup to prevent President-elect Lula from taking office. The Federal Highway Police, headed by a public supporter of the president, was slow to act against them — the corporation’s chief will now face a malfeasance investigation.
Mr. Bolsonaro has even been absent on social media, his battleground of choice. Data from Meta CrowdTangle shows he drastically reduced the number of posts per day on his official profiles.
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