São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce named vice president Michel Temer as the 2013 Arab Chamber Personality, on Monday evening (25) at a dinner celebrating the Arab Community Day. “I am very proud to receive this honour on the day of the Arab Community,” said Temer to over 500 guests at the Syrian Sports Club, in São Paulo.
The vice-president’s parents were Lebanese who immigrated to Brazil in the first half of the 20th century. “Brazil is such a loving country that it was possible for so many of the members of the Arab community to be successful here,” said Temer. “I am a living example of this reception by Brazil,” he added, on speaking about his professional, academic and political career.
He pointed out that in the country it was possible for a son of immigrants to go to college, become a lawyer, professor and then to climb several rungs in the political arena. Before being elected vice president in an alliance with president Dilma Rousseff, in 2010, Temer was attorney general for the state of São Paulo, state Public Safety secretary, three times state representative, president of the Lower House and has also been president of the PMDB, one of Brazil’s largest political parties, for 10 years. “Only a warm and brotherly people could have given me this possibility,” he said.
Arab Brazilian Chamber president Marcelo Sallum said that March 25th, the Day of the Community, is a “fair celebration of those who left their homeland to try out their luck in an unknown land” and who helped “build Brazil”.
He said that the first official record of the arrival of Arabs in Brazil is 1874, when brothers in a Palestinian family named Zacharias arrived in Brazil. In the 1950s, in turn, according to the executive, 30% of spinners and weavers in São Paulo belonged to citizens of Arab origin.
“The community currently exceeds 12 million (immigrants and generations of descendants), and is the 9th largest Arab community in the world, a nation within a nation,” said Sallum, on offering Arab Chamber’s Great Chain of Honour.
Impulse
Temer, in turn, praised the work developed by the organisation and mentioning the trade figures between Brazil and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which grew over 140% from 2005 to last year, when they totalled almost US$ 26 billion. He added that, due to the connection established by immigrants, relations between Brazilians and the Arab world started gaining greater strength, and in different areas, over the last 10 years, after the first term in office of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was also honoured by the Arab Brazilian Chamber on the same day in 2010, when he was still in office.
The vice president recalled that he received from president Rousseff the mission of strengthening relations between Brazil and the Arabs and said that he has already visited Lebanon and Qatar. Next week, he will go on an official visit to Oman. “I plan to visit all the countries that are represented by ambassadors here,” he said. Among the guests were the ambassadors of several Arab countries, like Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, the representative of the League of Arab States and other diplomats.
Peace
Temer also mentioned the civil conflict with Syria and the peace process between Israel and Palestine. On observing that several religious leaders of different denominations were present at the dinner, among them Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Druze and Maronites, among others, he pointed out that these peaceful relations should serve as a message to the countries in conflict in the Middle East. “It makes no sense for brotherly nations to fight among themselves, or internally,” he pointed out.
The vice president explained that president Rousseff, who travelled to South Africa yesterday, to participate in the Brics summit, plans to push the group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to work on the peace process in Syria. “Brazil is interested in this peace,” she said.
The dean of the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Brazil, Ibrahim Alzeben, who represents Palestine, said that the conflict in the region is “a transitory phenomenon” and mentioned the Rousseff government’s support base with several parties, as an example of a political alliance. Nominally, he mentioned PMDB, his party, PT, the president’s party, and PCdoB, represented at the event by congressman Protógenes Queiróz. Alzeben spoke in classic Arabic at the request of his colleagues, although he knows how to speak Portuguese. “Vice president, you deserve the honour, from all our hearts,” he said.
Apart from politicians, diplomats, board members at the Arab Brazilian Chamber and religious leaders, the dinner also brought together businessmen, representatives of civil society organisations and other leaders in the Arab community. The president of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp), Paulo Skaf, for example, said that the Arab Brazilian Chamber “was very fortunate for having thought of celebrating” Temer, not just due to his career, but for his connection with the community. The former mayor of São Paulo, Gilberto Kassab, in turn, qualified the event as a “just homage to a fair Brazilian”.
*Translated by Mark Ament
