1. The CDU, PCP and PEV [coalition] have had a constant intervention which, not disregarding any possibility of defending, restoring and winning rights, prevented regressions and scored advances that had a positive impact on the lives of millions of people. The evolution in the country’s situation imposed that solutions be sought for the national problems, for the lives of the Portuguese workers and people. But instead the PS, striving for an absolute majority, in convergence with the President of the Republic, brought about the convening of early elections.
Three months later, the need for the response to the country’s problems which the PS Government refused last October has become more obviously necessary. The problems which weight on the everyday lives of those who live and work in the country, the problems which characterize and constrain our national development remain and grow, raising the need for the steps and responses which their scale and economic and social expression require.
The political context and the balance of forces are marked by an electoral result which, based on an extreme bipolarization, has benefitted the PS, despite the fact that it has run away from the responses that the country needs.
The question that is posed, without subtrefuges or postponements, is that of knowing what are the options that the country faces: whether there is a prospect of a policy that can confront the problems and provide solutions in the interests of the workers and the people; or whether, on the contrary, the intention of continuing to postpone this response, benefitting the interests of big capital and worsening inequalities and injustices will prevail. The PS has in its hands the option of either reaching agreements with the PSD, or converging on the left, with the CDU, to respond to the country’s problems.
And no blackmail against the CDU will make it depart from the solutions which the country needs.
On the part of the CDU, we reaffirm our permanent commitment to the Portuguese workers and people, and the determination to continue promoting the convergence to solve the country’s problems which, without further postponements, include as their goals: to promote a sustainable economic development; a general increase in wages as a national emergency, including a significant increase in the average wage and the Minimum Wage; to ensure the repeal of the harmful norms of the labour legislation; to guarantee the rights of children and their parents, free creches within a public network; to value old-age and other pensions, as well as social benefits; to defend the National Health Service, fixing and attracting professionals, valuing careers and pay, ensuring more medical appointments, examinations and surgeries; to defend and value Social Security, Education, Science, Culture and Sports; to strengthen public services; to guarantee the right to dignified housing and stronger public transportation; to ensure a policy of fiscal justice; to guarantee the right to a healthy environment and ecological balance, opposing the commodification of nature and the prevention and mitigation of the effects of climate change.
Every vote for the CDU and each one of its elected MPs will count for this path, which requires the participation and the broad mobilization of the workers and the people.
2. The CDU’s electoral result in the January 30, 2022, general elections, marks an electoral fall with a significant loss of MPs, including the institutional representation of the PEV. This result, which falls short of the work that was carried out and of the remarkable contribution for the advances and achievements that were won, of the value of the proposed solutions for the country’s problems and of the campaign of clarification and mobilization for the vote that thousands of activists personified, represents a negative element in the life of the country. In this more difficult context, the CDU reaffirms its determination to pursue and intensify its activity in defense of the interests and aspirations of the workers and the people, for solutions to the country’s problems, for an alternative policy with the values of April in Portugal’s future.
3. Regardless of further assessments that must be made, the results of the legislative election are inseparable from a number of objective and subjective factors that shaped them:
The operation that was undertaken after the dissolution of the Assembly of the Republic [Parliament] to favour the creation of a central bloc, stimulating a dynamic of bipolarization;
The shameless action of the PS to appropriate advances in defending, restoring and winning rights, that always resulted from the CDU’s determined action;
The persistent lie that held the PCP and PEV responsible for the convening of elections after the rejection of the Draft State Budget for 2022;
The convening of election in an epidemic situation with the instigation of fear, rendering more difficult the work of proximity and direct contact that is so characteristic of the CDU ;
The promotion and favouring of other political forces, namely reactionary forces, converging with the devaluing and discrimination targetting the CDU.
4. Beyond what emerges from these results and what they represent, we greet the remarkable intervention of the activists of CDU, of the PCP, PEV, ID and many people without a Party affiliation whom, with extraordinary dedication, shouldered the work of enlightening and mobilizing for the vote, and who carried out, in particularly difficult circumstances, a mass campaign that carried the reasons for voting CDU to all corners of the country.
We greet all the men and women, and in particular the many young people, the CDU youth, who with their militant participation provided this campaign with great energy, joy and fighting spirit.
We also greet each and every voter who entrusted the CDU with their confidence and, in particular the many who did so for the first time, assuring them as of now that their vote and support does finish on the day of the election, but rather will be used in full at the service and defense of the rights and yearnings of the workers and the people.
We reaffirm the importance, for the present and the future, of the CDU, the United Democratic Coalition between the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party The Greens, integrating the Democratic Intervention [organization] and thousands of people without a Party affiliation, as well as of its activity in the institutions and as a a force and example of convergence.
In the current situation, the CDU reaffirms today and for the future its pledge to continue and intensify its action and its struggle, to defend and advance in rights and living standards, for a developed and sovereign country, for a Portugal with a future.
