Macron and Lula in awalkto re-meme-ber
Rio De Janeiro: If social media is to be believed, French President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Brazil left him swooning.
Pictures showed him and his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ambling through the Amazon and posing beneath the soaring canopy in white button-down shirts. Then there they were again, standing close and clasping hands on a boat as Macron looked adoringly at Lula, both leaders’ faces lit by a gentle sun.
There were hugs and handshakes aplenty; smiles and selfies, too. Lula on Thursday bestowed the highest honour for a noncitizen on Macron, draping a medal around his neck.
Brazilian social media gobbled up the bonhomie with gusto, and users posted photos of the duo that many said looked more like a wedding album than a state visit. On the last evening of his trip, Macron joined in.
“Some people compared the images of my visit to Brazil with those of a wedding, and I say to them: It was a wedding!” he posted on X along with a photo of himself and Lula photoshopped onto the movie poster from La La Land in place of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. “France loves Brazil and Brazil loves France!”
Lula replied to his post with the flags of their two nations and an emoji of swirling hearts.
Their meeting represented something of a rapprochement after relations soured between Macron and Lula’s predecessor, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, as Amazon deforestation surged to a 15-year high on his watch. Before Macron’s departure, Lula gifted him with five of Brazil’s best cheeses, so that “he can tell me what he thought of them”, the Brazilian leader wrote on X.
Macron, for his part, didn’t immediately comment. — AP