We are facing a time of great complexities and uncertainties. The existing scientific evidence, but also everything that is still unknown to the scientific community about the new coronavirus, makes it urgent to combat Covid-19, reducing and minimizing its impacts on the health and life of the Portuguese, and placing as first priority the adoption of preventive measures, of expanding the capacity to respond of the National Health Service and protecting those most at risk while combating the spread of the disease and the necessary clinical response.

We have already said this and we want to reaffirm our solidarity with the healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, technicians and operational assistants, as well as with fire fighters and other civil protection agents, security and military forces, to all those under very difficult conditions, often faced with a lack of resources and risking their health, fight to save lives. As well as with all other workers who, with their work, do not let the country stop, ensuring essential services, from nursing homes to the transport of goods, from waste collection to the functioning of commercial distribution.

To all the Portuguese people who are engaged in complying with the guidelines of health protection, a word of recognition for the attitude they have assumed and that they must maintain so that the positive results we have achieved are maintained and allow us to successfully tackle the health problem that we face.

And to all who have felt the difficulties that this situation imposes on the living conditions, jobs and wages, in isolation or alone, we also want to express a word of encouragement. We know that the solution to the health problem has heavy consequences and is already causing huge difficulties for thousands of people and families. The PCP will continue to do everything in its power to ensure that these problems are addressed and overcome with the corresponding priority social measures.

In view of the situation in the country and in the world, the need for exceptional measures to protect health and life is obvious. But it is not acceptable that they are not used as a weapon to trample workers' rights and guarantees, taking advantage of legitimate concerns as an alibi to attack and eliminate rights.
The measures of prevention and social containment can and must be ensured and ascertained without the need for the imposition of the State of Emergency, which, in essence, has only added more limitations to rights, freedoms and guarantees, particularly for workers.

The situation of the last few weeks shows that the State of Emergency served as an alibi so that economic groups and the big employers, with total freedom and complete impunity, could dismiss, exploit and drastically restrict the possibility for workers to organise, defend and enforce their rights.

The State of Emergency is being seized by those who see in the current situation an opportunity to increase exploitation, to appropriate the resources of the State and Social Security, by those who want to magnify the negative consequences to the economy with the aim of channelling even more resources for monopoly economic groups at the expense of destroying installed capacity, particularly of small and medium-sized enterprises, by those who see in the rising unemployment, particularly of workers with precarious ties, an opportunity to justify penalising rights and wages of the workers.

Yes, it is true, the virus is dangerous and can kill!

But worsening exploitation and impoverishment, dismissing abusively, cutting wages, deregulating working hours, denying social protection to the most vulnerable sectors, also destroys lives!

Rights are not, and cannot be, quarantined!

There are lessons and teachings to be learned from the situation we live in:

1st. The National Health Service, with all its limitations and shortcomings, is and is being the crucial and irreplaceable tool for responding to the health problem that lies ahead. It is crucial to strengthen it, requiring an emergency plan and investment in the NHS to provide more advanced responses in defence of the health of the Portuguese, in the present and in the future. As it is necessary to defend and strengthen all public services.

2nd. The workers and the country became poorer with the SGPs and the Pact of Aggression by the Troika and their scorched earth policy, increased unemployment, made cuts in wages and rights. With the restoration of rights and wages, the valorisation of retirement and pensions and of the social responses the economy improved, employment increased, the country made progress. This is the way: to defend and valorise wages, pensions and rights, to create jobs and ensure development.

3rd.For Portugal to have a future, it is necessary to produce, it is necessary to free ourselves from the bonds imposed by the European Union and the euro, it is necessary to affirm our sovereignty and our right to sovereign economic development.

To counter regression and ensure a path of progress, it is necessary to face the near future with determination.

Responding to the problems that are already foreseen, doing what needs to be done to uphold the living conditions of the workers and people, relaunch national production and reduce external dependence.

Safeguarding wages, jobs and rights is a decisive issue at this moment and indispensable to guarantee, in the future, the necessary response and way out.
It is urgent to implement an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy that guarantees conditions for the country to face its problems and ensure its development.

In times of closed doors and almost empty streets and avenues, the date of the April Revolution celebrations is drawing near.

The PCP calls for us to celebrate it!

On the afternoon of April 25, at 3 pm, let us open our windows and sing Grândola Vila Morena and the National Anthem, giving meaning to the freedom achieved and the values of April, affirming our national independence and sovereignty, with a strong conviction that fear and abdication will be upstaged by hope in the future and the struggle for a better country and a better life.