About the nomination of António Costa
Statement of the General Secretary of the PCP
1. Fifty days after the parliamentary elections on October 4, the political and institutional consequence of the will of the Portuguese people expressed in these elections was finally accomplished. With the electoral defeat of PSD and CDS and the rejection of the coalition government's programme on November 10 in the Assembly of the Republic, the government of Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas was finally removed. Thus is consummated the final and definitive defeat of the PSD/CDS coalition putting an end to the deliberate procrastination with which the President of the Republic sought to prevent and hinder the implementation of a governing solution, in accordance with the new relationship of political forces in the Assembly of the Republic. The PCP can only register and criticize the process started with the communication by Cavaco Silva on October 23, itself contrary to the Constitution and respect for the democratic rules required from the President. Fifty days later Cavaco Silva nominates António Costa as prime minister and puts an end to the crisis that he himself created in defiance of the will of the Assembly of the Republic and his constitutional duties. He does this, and this should be stressed, without concealing, either by the assumptions or the terms he uses, his clear annoyance with the solution that until the last moment he tried to prevent.
2. And now the conditions are created, as we have insistently claimed were possible, for PS to be able to form a government, present its programme and take office. The "Joint Position by the PS and the PCP on the political solution" is the basis for the adoption of a policy to ensure a lasting solution in terms of the legislature. The real and committed effort by the PCP, without prejudice to the recognized limitations and reach that the degree of convergence enabled, is to enhance its implementation and represent, with the adopted measures and policies, the sign of change that the Portuguese demanded with their clear condemnation of the previous government and policy.
3. A new phase in national politics is now opened, able to answer many of the pressing problems of the workers and the Portuguese people. With the government's action, as is now required, but not less important and decisive, with the real possibility opened with the new composition of the Assembly of the Republic, of adopting the decisions that meet the legitimate aspirations of the Portuguese people. Nothing can evade that there is in the Assembly an institutional base that will enable the implementation of a set of measures and solutions that respond to the interests of the workers and the people, an institutional base that will go as far as the will of each political force that composes it, supporting the path of restoration of wages and incomes, the handing back of rights, strengthening the access to health, education and social security, supporting small and medium-size companies, pensioners, the youth.
Nothing prevents that, from the early days of this new legislature, a set of bills are tabled and adopted to correspond to the new institutional conditions to respond to the rights and aspirations of the workers and the people.
4. The PCP reaffirms its commitment to the workers, the people and the country. The lasting commitment which the PCP renews, with the sure guarantee of its commitment to contribute, without giving up its ideological and political independence, to ensure for Portugal a path of economic development, social progress and national independence.
The possibility now open to take steps, limited but nevertheless important, of adopting a path to reverse the course of decline imposed in the last four years, cannot and should not be wasted. Albeit with the full awareness that this does not leave out, on the contrary requires, the essential aim of a rupture with the right-wing policy and the implementation of a patriotic and left-wing policy.
5. It is this aim that the workers and the people, the democrats and patriots, all those who want ensured the right to a sovereign Portugal, should continue to pursue with their intervention and struggle. An aim also inseparable from the contribution that they will be called to give to ensure that the elections for President of the Republic will prevent the continuation of the path of commitment with the right-wing policy and confrontation with the Constitution of the Republic that PSD and CDS are already preparing with the support of their candidate.
