Biden says democracy has reached “inflection point” and criticizes “autocrats”

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, said on Thursday (9) that democracy has reached a “tipping point” to which countries need to respond appropriately.

The speeches are part of Biden’s inaugural speech at the Summit for Democracy organized by the United States between this Thursday (9) and Friday (10).

The American president defined the defense of democracy as one of the “challenges of our time” and also criticized so-called “autocrats” who seek, for Biden, to “divide” the parts of the democratic world.

“Democracy doesn’t happen by accident, we have to renew it every generation. This is an urgent matter, as we are seeing countries pointing in the wrong direction,” said Biden.

“There are pressures from autocrats who seek to increase their power to justify more ‘efficient’ forms of democracy. It’s how it’s sold. They are voices that want to divide us. And, perhaps most importantly, they want to increase people’s dissatisfaction with democratic governments,” he declared.

“Democracy may be fragile, but it is resilient, it is capable of correcting itself. She is difficult, we know that”, added Joe Biden after citing global reports that point to the weakening of democratic regimes – including in the United States.

The American president also announced future funds to encourage the fight against corruption, as well as projects on press freedom, technology promotion, respect for the rights of girls and the LGBTQIA+ community in the US and other nations.

The holding of the Summit, in addition to calling several countries considered allies for the US, generated criticism, on the other hand, from nations such as China and Russia.

Over the weekend, China virtually held its own International Forum on Democracy, supposedly accompanied by politicians and academics from more than 120 countries, and released a white paper (report) falsely claiming that their one-party system is a democracy that works better than the system in the United States.

The Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the United States complained the summit was “undemocratic” in a joint opinion piece published in late November by The National Interest, an American magazine. Chinese and Russian diplomats falsely referred to their countries as democracies.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) participated in the initial conference with Biden this Thursday. Bolsonaro is expected to speak on Friday (10) on topics such as freedom of expression on the internet and the fight against corruption, according to a document obtained by analyst Caio Junqueira, from CNN.

*With information from Sean Lyngaas of CNN