Here we are at this magnificent rally in this fascinating "Avante!" Festival and, for that, our fraternal greeting to all those who are present here!

But we do not tire in stressing that the originality, the distinctive brand of this political and cultural event lies in the way and in those who architected, projected and built it!

Without being reductive or unfair taking into account the effort of innumerable comrades and friends of various conditions and different generations, I would like convey a combative and solidary greeting especially to the youth to the JCP [Portuguese Communist Youth]. Their participation in the work brigades, this colourful line of youth present at this rally, the way they live and enjoy these days, defeat the generalizing ideas, particularly among those who are politically responsible for the difficulties and precarity of the Portuguese youth, and consider that the youth are selfish and individualists and not interested in politics.

This "Avante!" Festival gives greater strength to our confidence that the youth do not stand and wait to be a force of the future, but are a force of the present to build a better future!

Greetings to the dozens of delegations from Communist Parties and other progressive forces who brought to us their example and testimony, the way they resist, fight, built their collective future and that of their peoples and render a strong expression to the internationalist aspect of our Festival.

An internationalist festival that affirmed the endless confidence of this Party in a future of progress, justice and peace for Humanity. A confidence based upon the unwavering conviction that it is the class struggle that determines and will determine the course of History and that – quoting Salvador Allende, whose birth centenary we commemorate in our Festival – "History is ours and people make history".

But this confidence in the central role of the workers and the peoples, to set in march the engine of history, does not forget the instability, the insecurity and the uncertainty that characterize the present international situation.

A year ago, from here, we drew attention to the looming crisis in the financial sector and warned that it would expand, affecting violently the world economy, the workers and all those more exposed to the exploiting and predatory character of capitalism. Today, a year after, here we have the crisis. A deep economic crisis of capitalism whose worldwide impact has not yet appeared in its full extension and consequences.

Our Festival commemorated the 160 years of the publication of the Communist Manifesto and 190 years of the birth of Karl Marx. Observing the world we live in, and in spite of the great changes it has undergone, the actuality and validity of the Marxist analyses of capitalism, as well as Lenin’s theses on imperialism, are in fact remarkable, showing that the heightening of the class struggle is the central point of the situation in this beginning of the 21st. century and that the intensification of the struggle for the alternative of socialism is increasingly a necessity and a real possibility.

But if it is a fact that capitalism is facing a serious crisis, it is also true that capitalism’s answer to this situation is being expressed in increasingly more violent ways of exploitation, oppression and imperialist wars. The militarist face of imperialism and the growing wave of attacks on the most basic rights and freedoms grow.

How often have we drawn attention to the threats to world peace that lay in factors such as: the strengthening of NATO and its spreading to the East; the arms race led by the USA and the deployment of the notorious so-called "anti-missile" system; the militarization of the European Union and the trampling of the most elementary principles of international law?

How often have we said that peace in the Middle East and Central Asia would never come without an end to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the end of the threats against sovereign states and respect for the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people? We were and are right.

The war has reached the Caucasus, the threats are mounting and there we have the USA and the European Union hastening to attain the objectives of this conflict: flood the region with NATO armies, occupy it from a strategic point of view and control its natural resources and energy routes. The war drums continue to sound in the Middle East and there are new conflicts and instability in almost all the continents of the globe.

There are signs that worse times are yet to come: the strong militarization of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea; the redeployment of the IV North American Fleet in Latin America, the continuation of the main conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia or the new US military command in Africa, are just examples of great concern.

And the speeches that reach us from the electoral campaign in the USA do not tranquilize us, just the opposite. And so it is necessary to remain watchful and continue the struggle, because only this will lead to real changes.

And in this struggle the role of the Communist Parties, of progressive forces, of countries and peoples who do not bow to the world order of imperialism is of a vital importance. They are the ones who stimulate and head, under very different and sometimes difficult conditions, the struggle of the resistance of the workers and the peoples against the imperialist threats, aggressions and occupations, as in the Middle East and Central Asia. To all of them we express our solidarity.

A special greeting to the people and the comrades from Palestine, who commemorated in this Festival, the 60 years of the first Israeli occupation war of Palestine.

A greeting to those who in Africa continue the struggle for the development of their countries against the neo-colonialist designs and to those here in Europe who close ranks with our Party in the struggle for a Europe of the workers and the peoples, a Europe that has to do with the defeat of the present project of a neo-liberal, militarist and federalist European integration, which increasingly turns this Europe into an imperial power with ambitions of global intervention. A greeting to those who unselfishly and decisively intervene in processes that open the way to social justice, to the affirmation of national sovereignty, to internationalist solidarity and to socialism as in Latin America – with Venezuela, Bolivia and Socialist Cuba, which commemorates 50 years of the revolutionary path by a people who did not waver under very adverse conditions and powerful attacks.

And to all those present in this grandiose rally of the "Avante!" Festival we would like to convey our conviction that, in spite of the existing dangers in the evolution of the international situation, there is a strong potential of struggle and progressive or even revolutionary development. And say, to all, that you can rely on this Portuguese Communist Party which, with all its energies continues, here in Portugal, the struggle for a revolutionary transformation of society and the construction of socialism our country, fully aware that this is the best contribution that we can give to the wider struggle for the emancipation of the workers and the peoples at the international level.

The economic and financial crisis that is installed, with serious consequences in the lives of the peoples, revealed the failure of the guidelines and conceptions of the dominating capitalism and its incapability to answer the problems of humanity. It is these conceptions and guidelines that also in Portugal the main political parties with governing responsibilities, PSD and PS, assumed as the core of a political programme which, essentially, converged and is being materialized in Portugal.

A political programme which, with the government of José Sócrates assumed a new and wider dimension with the materialization of its proposals to reconfigure the State, increasingly moulded to the interests of the big economic interests, with the diabolization of everything that is public and belongs to all and which has led to a wide offensive against the social rights and living conditions of the workers and the populations.

These years of the José Sócrates PS government clearly show the identity of the values, purposes and objectives with the more substantial part of the neo-liberal programme. The PS governance is a good example of a left, called modern, which not only speaks the language of the right, but rules like the right.

Which has elected, in concert with the right-wing parties and big capital, the excess of social protection and state structure, as the source of all evils and discredit and disqualify a whole world of references of a past of social achievements, stigmatizing the fight for their defence as archaic and backward and even the achieved social rights as corporative privileges, unfair and unacceptable.

Which has embraced as theirs, the neo-liberal treatise of privatizations withholding no means and consequences to the country and the people, of the primacy of purely financial and speculative activities, of promotion of capitalist globalization against the nation-State and its intervention, of full market liberalization, including the labour market, to impose the absolute reign of flexibility, a world of precarity and arbitrariness.

Which has excelled in the application of the monetarist dogma and turned the consolidation of public accounts into an absolute value, instead of promoting growth and employment.

The failure of the policy of the right in solving the problems of the Portuguese is well patent in the serious economic and social situation the country faces. A serious situation of crisis which has been going for too long and which the PS government was not only incapable of solving, but made it worse in several areas, particularly in the social area.

In view of the failure of its governing action, the perspective of maintaining the chronic economic stagnation and the worsening of the living conditions of the Portuguese, Prime Minister José Sócrates blames the setbacks of his governance on the international crisis. The national situation is, naturally, influenced by the international and European context, but the main causes of the crisis are due to internal reasons based upon the existence and insistence on a policy that placed the interests of the big economic and financial speculation groups above the interests of the country, the workers and the populations.

The fact that Portugal today has one of the highest rates of unemployment of the last decades and one of the highest rates of precarious labour in Europe does not derive from the recent international crisis, but from deliberate options of national politics.

The continuing loss of purchasing power from work earnings is not just the result of the recent evolution of the international crisis, but of the policy of the present PS government deliberately marked by the intent to devalue and crush wages and pensions.

The reason why the country is facing the longest recession and stagnation period in memory is not explained by the recent international crisis, but by the inability of a national policy which forsook the defence of our economy and continued to mortgage the development of the country. It is not the recent evolution of the international conjuncture that can explain the continuing backwardness of the country and its systematic divergence, since 2001, from the average levels of development in European countries, but the insistence on the same solutions in national politics which, indistinctly, PSD and PS have been materializing.

Without any solutions to the problems and in view of the continuous worsening of the country’s situation, José Sócrates has also been justifying the unjustifiable by resorting to demagoguery and manipulation to save the government’s face and continue its disastrous policy.

As to the unemployment, José Sócrates is saying that he created 133 thousand jobs, but the truth is that between the second quarter of 2005 and the second quarter of 2008, the official statistics say that the jobs created did not surpass 96 thousand. Statistics that, wrongly, count as employed 60 thousand jobless, who continuously attend training courses and traineeships by the Employment Department. It is true. Not even half of the announced jobs were created.

This is the great hoax built around the creation of jobs in Portugal!

The bad results of the Portuguese economy are now being presented, not as a disaster of his government, but as a success. Faced with a country in economic regression and continuing decline in growth, the PS government resorts to self-praise, presenting itself as a builder of a more robust and resistant country, because the country is not yet into recession. Goals, objectives, forecasts went into oblivion.

The government’s solemnly announced objectives which, at the end of its mandate, were supposed to ensure a strong economic growth and more development, less unemployment and better living conditions for the Portuguese, which in effect they never assumed, are now replaced by the lowest objective of preventing the country from sinking and this constitutes a success!

But, contrary to what the government says and wants to make believe, it is the frailties and weaknesses of the country that emerge to the surface with the crisis and not the robust country of its propaganda. Frailties that have increased during these more than three years.

But it is not only the fact that the country does not leave the vicious circle of apathy and stagnation of stop and go and stop once again. It is the new disequilibrium in the balance of payments and the debt that dangerously mortgages the future of the country and condemns it to a chronic dependence.

We are increasingly importing more and dearer the goods essential to the life of the Portuguese and increasingly producing less due to the disastrous policies of abandonment of our agriculture, fisheries and national industries. These are additional social wounds of unemployment, low wages and miserly pensions and precarity that are now more than ever exposed with the rise in prices and essential goods, of the interest rates and the growing indebtedness of the families and unrecoverable debt, problems which the government addressed with insensibility and fatalism.

These are wounds exposed by the attack against the National Health Service which left the populations more unprotected in their access to their right to health, with the closure of services and the increase of its costs.

It was the counter-reform in Social Security that weakened the system of social protection

in order to lower the deficit at the cost of the retired, the unemployed and the needier families. The grievous formula to calculate new pensions and the updating of the current ones which lowered the pensions and the thousands of Portuguese that do not receive unemployment benefits, more than 263 thousand, are the new victims of the policy of accelerated reduction of deficit. A deficit lowered solely at the cost of sacrifice of those who have less and of an increase in fiscal injustice.

In Portugal, the higher the incomes and the profits, the lower the taxes paid. The banks, during these last three years, did not pay, as they were supposed to, 1563 million euros in income taxes. José Sócrates promised to put an end to this scandal, but in 2007, the banks continued to pay not more than a 13.6% income tax rate, half of what it should. EDP [Electric Utilities], for example, has just released its figures for the first half of 2008. The profits are 44% higher than last year, but their taxes grew just 4%.

It is this ethic in the combat against the deficit and the policy of fiscal equity of the so-called modern left, added to the several millions of fiscal benefits to the off-shores and a practical exemption of taxes on stock exchange activities and operations.

It is this policy that flourishes the wealth of the big fortunes, the fabulous profits of the big economic and financial capital and enables around a hundred wealthy people to hold in their hands a colossal fortune of 32 thousand million euros. Fortunes that represent a fifth of the national wealth!

Fortunes that are all the more shocking since we are one of the most unequal countries in the European Union, going against the Constitution which is increasingly questioned with the subordination of the political power to the economic power and a shameless promiscuity among leaders, government rulers and other responsible people from the PS, PSD and CDS-PP, who hop from public duties to private management and vice-versa, and acting similarly on both sides: damaging the collective interest and protecting the businesses and profits of the big economic groups.

This promiscuity corrodes the democratic regime and constitutes a trademark of the governments and parties which, during the last decades, have been delivering the country, its riches, its wealth and economy to a handful of powerful private interests and who compensate them for the good services rendered.

There is not a single area in our collective life that has not been, in these years of PS government, confronted with its ostensibly anti-social policies. It is not only in health and social security.

In education, it was the prolonged attack against Public Schools, against the teaching profession and the rights of the teachers and students and against the principles of autonomy and democratic management of schools.

In justice, what we are witnessing is that the government never went this far in its attempts to condition and control the judicial power, compromising its independence and the separation of powers laid down in the Constitution. It is totally unacceptable that every reform the government makes, like the judiciary map promulgated by the President of the Republic, results in more inaccessible justice, and worse justice to the people. A worrisome trait in the evolution of the country, which has been deepening along with the attack against social rights, is the impoverishment of the democratic regime with the menace against democratic rights and freedoms.

Democracy is suffering disturbing attacks, with the PS government following a dangerous path, which reveals increasing traits of intolerance and authoritarianism, repression of protest, policing of society, limitations on freedoms of press, speech and propaganda, of growing attacks against workers and their trade union and labour rights and their organizations, as well as the autonomy of popular organizations and even of political parties.

During these past few days, the problems of security are in order, with alarm and justified concern among the Portuguese. Subtracting the impact of the excessive media coverage of this phenomenon of criminality, the truth is that there is a feeling in society that the criminals go unpunished and that the State is more vulnerable to crime.

We, the PCP, clearly say: the government we have and those which preceded it are solely responsible for the situation we are in. And not only because of the economic and social situation that breeds it, but due to a lack of adequate policies in the area of security – it is afflicting and well-known the lack of conditions the police professionals live and work in, it is the lack of material means and adequate training, it is mainly a shortage of policemen in the streets of our towns and cities. We all feel it, there is more crime, but fewer policemen with fewer rights and less conditions to exercise their duties.

The answer of the government, so weak that it is shocking, as we have witnessed during the past weeks with the Minister of Internal Affairs and Prime Minister Sócrates, being completely overtaken by the events. And this absence of answer cannot be concealed by the mediatic operations in the so-called poor neighbourhoods of the metropolitan areas, with searches and sieges of spectacular effects but no visible results.

The problems will not be solved in this way. Nor by following the path of a police state, and an increasingly spied society, with solutions involving "chipped" citizens and cars, video vigilance, concentrated information and ID cards, with a police force more repressive with those who fight and who resist, with a General Secretary for Internal Security, a truly super cop at the behest of government, with powers never before held by anyone in democracy.

We will not allow the materialization of this path. We will not exchange freedom for security, because we would end up without both.

The country needs a coherent strategy of prevention and repression of crime. But it is urgent to define and apply concrete measures that will in the short term contain the advance of crime. The PCP will present new political and legislative initiatives in the area of criminal legislation, as well as a reinforcement of the means for the security forces. We thus assume, with coherence, our responsibilities.

This past year was yet another year of vigorous and wide struggles by the workers and the populations. Many small and large struggles which, all around the country, vividly expressed the rejection and condemnation of the policy of the present government and a firm wish for change, pouring into the grandiose actions of protest and huge demonstrations promoted by CGTP-IN. Great struggles like the General Protest of October and the more recent National Struggle Action of last June, involving hundreds of thousands of people.

A struggle of various sectors and many companies: from the Public Administration to the thrilling demonstration by teachers; the numerous demonstrations and vigils in defence of public service; the important struggle of the farmers, fishermen, retired, military, small transport entrepreneurs, many user movements, students from universities and higher education and PCP´s magnificent March for Freedom and Democracy, which involved more than 50 thousand communists and other democrats, confirming once again the vitality of a Party that remains at the forefront of the combat for freedom, democracy and development of the country.

Struggles that prove the existence of a wide movement of protest which brought to the streets men, women and youth from all political quarters, including many, many socialist voters and militants, disappointed with the PS government policy and who aspire for a true change in the course of the country. A government which, due to the combative struggle of the workers and the population, is today more isolated at the social and political level.

Struggles, many of them successful, which here and there forced the government to back down and reduce the level of its offensive and the levels of arrogance, as was the case of the attack against health services and, to a certain measure, in education. In some areas they are now following a policy of small steps, because of the nearing of elections, with the prospect of renewing its mandate and resume the offensive.

If it were not for the struggle, or the answer of the workers and the populations, the offensive would have by now gone very far in its destructive objectives.

That the destructive objectives are still there is clear in the unqualifiable assault on the inherited rights of the workers from the Public Administration, now consummated. That the PS government did not give up going all the way in its objectives to destroy the rights of the workers can be seen in this abominable proposal of change, for worse, of the Labour Code, which it wants to approve with unheard urgency and which constitutes one of our more immediate battles.

What the government aims to impose with the changes to the Labour Code is the destruction of the fundamental rights of the Portuguese workers to increase exploitation, leaving the employers with a free reign to dismiss with or without just cause, increase precarity, reduce wages, increase work shifts, weaken collective bargaining. What the PS truly wants with its proposal to change the Labour Code is win the submission of the working world to exploitation without limits, through a permanent threat of unemployment and precarity.

The seriousness of the content of the government proposals demands a strong and combative answer of struggle by the Portuguese workers. Now is the time to give a new thrust to the continuation of the struggle.

PCP’s National Campaign that we have just launched here at the "Avante!" Festival and which will run till the end of October, also goes in the direction of this necessity. The Portuguese communists, we are certain, will be at the forefront of mobilization and dynamization of the struggle to put a stop to this measure of brutal social regression.

This is the time to continue to act and increase the struggle, to give strength to the National Day of Struggle set by CGTP-IN for this coming October, 1!

With all due credit to CGTP, the trade union movement, workers’ committees and many struggle committees, we have to stress the decisive intervention and initiative by the PCP which, by denouncing, combating and resisting the offensive against the rights of the workers and the social and political rights of the Portuguese people, has simultaneously come forward with just proposals in terms of parliament and did not wait for the election campaigns to contact, animate and go ahead with the struggle in defence of employment and national productive sectors, against the subversion of labour laws, against precarity, for the valorisation of wages and pensions and the defence of the heritage of the social rights of our people, namely the rights to health, education, social security and housing.

In view of the worsening of the situation of the country and the life of the workers and the people, it was the PCP which came forward as the great opposition force, reaffirming its unflinching will to be what it is: a Party of struggle, of proposal and project.

A proposal of political alternative for the resolution of the great national problems and for the improvement of the living conditions of the people, as we clearly demonstrated in the recent National Conference on Economic and Social Issues and which constituted a central moment in the affirmation of a different course for Portugal and the Portuguese.

A proposal for the solution of concrete and more pressing problems. And with this in mind, in June, the PCP put forward a set of seven urgent measures.

Today the situation has changed very little. The foreseeable continuation of the worsening of the economic situation and the rise in the inflation rate, which may reach 3% at the end of the year, will aggravate even more the problems facing the country and the Portuguese.

The government continues to show no signs of containing and reversing this crisis situation. The situation demands a consideration and need for immediate measures, urgent, some of them without even waiting for the State Budget for 2009. Measures to lessen the social effects of the crisis. Measures to energize the economy.

And so the country has to urgently address three central problems: production deficit, unemployment and unfair distribution of national income. This demands, in the present context, a speedy energization of public investment, the support to small-sized companies and the vitalization of the internal market by increasing the income of the population.

Within the scope of a set of proposals that we will present in answer to the more pressing problems of the economy and the life of the Portuguese, namely during the debate on the State Budget for 2009, we consider as prioritary and we will intervene in this sense, the presentation of the following measures:

1 – The revalorization of wages and pensions, with a significant increase above the inflation, so as to compensate for the loss of the purchasing power, include a complement in the Christmas bonus for all workers and pensioners, in the amount of the real loss in wages and pensions during 2008, including the workers and pensioners from Public Administration, forcing the government to carry out the pledge it assumed before them;

2- A shareholder guideline by the State to the Caixa Geral de Depósitos to set maximum spread of 0.5% in the credit for permanent housing, with the resulting follow up in the rest of the market, thus reducing the monthly payment on loans;

3 – A freeze on the prices of electricity, water and gas, and a real cut, not bellow 5 €, in the price of gas cylinders, considering that the supplying companies continued to show during the first half of 2008 a high rise in the profit rates, with, for example, EDP having more than 66.1% and GALP more than 30.7% !

From this rostrum we wish to reaffirm, ensuring that we will try our best to prevent the workers, the popular strata of our people, namely the new generations, from paying the bill of a wrong and unfair policy and that we will continue to fight for the proposals that meet the interests of the workers and the people.

The parties which have governed the country during the last decades have already proved to have no solutions for the resolution of the national problems, to promote the development of the country and ensure a better life for the Portuguese.

The worsening of the problems and of the situation of the country makes increasingly imperative the need to build a new alternative path and a new solution which holds a clear breakaway from the guidelines that have led the country into the crisis and backwardness. It is time and more than time for change!

The country needs an alternative policy of the left to put an end to thirty years of the old and spent rotativism of alternation without alternative, between PS and PSD.

The country needs a real alternative policy of the left which will retrieve the project of democracy and economic and social development that the April Revolution inscribed in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.

An alternative which demands and involves a stronger PCP, able to push back and prevent the bipolarizing trends and the re-edition of the policies and political practices of the right. For the materialization of which there is an essential condition – the increase of the social, political and electoral influence of the PCP.

An alternative can be built in convergence with all those who are willing to assume a rupture with the policy of the right and are open to the construction of a new course, dictated by the interest of the people and the country.

It is time and more than time to say no to the illusionary game which makes a change in the leader or a change of "actors" an excuse to wipe out the page of evils and conceal the collective responsibility of the parties that have held power, to resume the same policies with the promise and illusion of a real change.

It is this illusionary game of deception of the nature of policies that is hidden through the personalization of political life, which now brings Ferreira Leite [the new leader of PSD] and about four years ago brought José Sócrates. A game which feeds upon political "chicane" around secondary issues and also of silences and complicities, as now happens. Silences imposed by the presidential "strategic concertation", in the name of the central bloc of interests.

The coming times will be times of great intervention and demands. Times of combat in the social field. Times of combat at the political and electoral level.

In the immediate future the elections in the Azores. From here we salute the commitment of all those who at this moment work for CDU to regain its presence in the Regional Assembly. We are confident that this goal will be achieved.

The electoral battles of 2009 assume, in this context of the need for a turnaround in national politics with the strengthening of the PCP, an unavoidable importance. The holding of three elections within a period of a few months –European, legislative and Local government – carry particular demands and responsibilities.

More votes, influence and political representation will mean a more decided intervention in defence of the interests of the country, the workers and the populations in the European Parliament, in the Assembly of the Republic, in the boroughs and municipalities of the country. But above all they will mean the strengthening of the conditions for a more decisive role by the PCP in the national political life, an opportunity to, through the strength of PCP and CDU, open the way for a different policy which will express the aspirations of the workers and the people for a better life, which will translate the wide movement of struggle by hundreds of thousands of workers and people which needs to be continued and developed.

This magnificent Festival, our struggle and intervention, our values, our project confirm the Portuguese Communist Party as a force without equal, a great political force of resistance and combat against this policy, a stronghold of rupture and change that Portugal needs.

We assumed with conviction the strengthening of the Party, we increased its influence and prestige, strengthened its intervention and organization, with a significant addition of new militants, the strengthening of the organization in companies and workplaces, attributing responsibilities to new cadres.

A strengthening of the Party only possible through the involvement of many thousands of militants, the party collective, men and women of all ages, whom we salute for their remarkable intervention. But it was also possible because we had the Portuguese Communist Youth, JCP the youth of the CP, and the generous and combative action of thousands of young people to whom we convey strong greetings.

The PCP carries out its role and, because of this, the attacks against it intensify, trying to condition and remove it from the way. Discriminations, silencing, detraction and slander, limitations on freedom of information and propaganda, strong restriction in the activities within the companies and workplaces – everything serves to try to condition PCP’s activity. Of particular meaning is the anti-democratic operation using the laws on political parties and their financing, made out by PSD, PS and CDS-PP, which year after year grows in an unacceptable way, trying to hit the party and the "Avante!" Festival.

We would like to say, very clearly, that this does not intimidate us and no one will decide on our behalf. We decide and will decide sovereignly on our life, our organization, our functioning, our guideline and our project, always at the service of the workers, the people and the country.

This Party, with more than eight decades of glorious history, decisive in the most important political and social battles, a leader together with the workers and the popular masses in epics of resistance and great achievements and advances, stands out in the present as the Party that Portugal needs to bring down social injustice and national decline, as a political force able to energize the movement of rupture with the policy of the right and for a more developed and fairer Portugal, based upon the participation and sovereign decision of the Portuguese people, a Portugal of the future which is a dream, a project and, above all, action and struggle.

Among the exacting tasks of the coming times, we have to point out this great event which is the XVIII Congress of the PCP. A congress of the Portuguese Communist Party, with its difference, incomparable democratic event, example of militant participation, great work of collective analysis, guideline and decision.

In the coming months, the members of the Party will be called to participate in the analysis and decision of guidelines on the situation of the country and the world, the growth of the struggles and mass movements, the guidelines to promote a rupture with the policy of the right and for an alternative of the left, the spreading of the combat against capitalism and imperialism, for the affirmation of the communist ideal, a path of peace and social progress. Objectives which are inseparable from the discussion and adoption of guidelines and measures to strengthen the PCP, in the ideological, political, organizational and intervening fields and for the widening of its capacity of mobilization, attraction and influence.

We know what we are and want to be: we are and want to be the Portuguese Communist Party, with its history, its struggle, its identity, its project for the future.

We affirm its class nature as a party of the working class and all workers, the one that best defends the interests and aspirations of all anti-monopolist classes and social strata. We stress its supreme goal of building a new society, free from exploitation and oppression, socialism and communism. We stress its theoretical basis, Marxism-Leninism, materialistic and dialectic conception, a revolutionary and transforming ideology. We point out its organic principles of the creative development of democratic centralism.

We are a party with an unmistakable identity, the reason for its existence, its strength and its irreplaceable role. Always with the workers and the people, always with national sovereignty and independence, always with the internationalist principles, we are and we will be the Portuguese Communist Party.

For April, for socialism.