Comrades,
The last four years have, in essence, confirmed the analyses of our 15th. Congress in relation to the characterization of the world evolution.
Instability and disorder are established in international relations with the attempt by imperialism to impose a "new order" hegemonized by USA and big business.
The attacks against the sovereignty of the weaker countries and against democracy have increased. Social injustice and inequalities have increased at levels seldom seen. Hundreds of millions of human beings survive in direst misery, at a time when wonderful conquests of science and technology could definitively put an end to the scourges of hunger, sickness, illiteracy and promote, respecting Nature and the conservation of vital environmental balance - also violently attacked by the race against maximum profit and the mercantilization of practically all social and human activity - in a sustained socio-economic development at world level.
The war of aggression against Yugoslavia, the new strategic concept of NATO and the rapid expansion in Europe of this aggressive alliance, the so called "right of interference", the stepped up militarization of the European Union, confirm the darkest forecasts as to the aggressive policy of imperialism and the will of the USA and other great powers to intervene, everywhere, to smash frontiers and resistances to the expansion of capitalist market and the exploitation by multi-nationals. Israel's terrorist repression against the heroic people of Palestine or the threats of USA's military aggression in Colombia, are recent examples of this policy, which we have to denounce and fight with great firmness.
Imperialism continues its offensive and is determined to fight to the end. The co-relation of forces at world level is still unfavourable to the revolutionary and progressive forces. Capitalism shows a great capacity for survival and reproduction. It is necessary to face these great difficulties. Obviously not to conclude on the impossibility of beating the power of big business or pursue the paths of adapting to the system. But to continue, with greater determination the struggle in defence of the vital interests of the workers, against imperialist "globalisation", for socialism.
This road has no easy solutions or ready to wear models.
Each country, each people, each communist and revolutionary party, faces specific realities, which determine a great diversity in immediate objectives, policy of alliances, forms of struggle. "Globalisation" presents common problems, which demand common answers but does not uniform the road to liberation, does not annul national areas as an immediate and irreplaceable field of class struggle, nor lessens the importance of democratic and progressive changes in each country, although precarious and dangerously exposed to the multifaceted intervention of globalised capital. It demands, however, more than ever, the strengthening of the solidarity and international cooperation among communists, progressists, workers and peoples all over the world.
Comrades,
PCP's international relations are very wide, intense and diversified. Our Party and its International Section have tried to strengthen traditional relations but also to establish and develop relations with new parties and movements resulting from the quick and deep changes which take place in international life and the recomposition and rearrangement of the revolutionary and left forces. The rostrum of our Congress, with more delegations than the previous one, clearly shows this reality. It is with great joy that we realize that we are not alone, that we can count upon a great number of sincere friends, that all over the world there are forces that resist and fight for freedom, national independence, social progress, socialism.
Point 4.8. in Chapter 4 of the Project of Political Resolution clearly refers to the activity and policy of the international relations of the PCP. We pay particular importance to the relations of our Party with other communist and left parties from the European Union countries and all Europe. Thus our great engagement in the activity of the Confederal Group of United European Left/Nordic Green Left of the European Parliament, our support to the "process of summits" of parties of the left, the realization of the great international rally meeting at Campo Pequeno for "Employment with rights" and other initiatives, We should pursue this route, trying to improve the forms of articulation between communists and other progressists and, above all, decisively increase the ways of common and converging action. All the problems surrounding the struggle for another Europe of progress, peace and co-operation, of struggle in defence of the conquests and rights of the workers, against militarism and dissolution of NATO, is of vital interest to our people.
It is equally fundamental to continue to widen our relations with the communist parties and revolutionary and progressive forces of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where some of the severest contradictions of the present are taking place. These relations, forged during a peculiar historical process and in line with our deep conception of world development, are a wonderful tradition of our Party.
We consider that it is an imperious necessity to unite the widest possible field of forces in the combat against neo-liberalism and its devastating consequences. Against the attempts to establish a totalitarian "new order", all convergences and alliances, even limited or circumstantial, are necessary, including forces from the social-democratic area, Green-Ecologists, emerging movements of different kinds. Simultaneously, we consider indispensable to preserve and affirm the ideological, political and organic independence of the revolutionary parties and increase co-operation. The communist and revolutionary movement, under necessarily renewed forms, continues to be a necessity for the anti-capitalist struggle and the socialist transformation of society.
Comrades,
Internationalism, having at its core proletarian internationalism, as expressed in the Constitution and Programme of our Party, is a structuring element of PCP's communist identity. The struggle of the Portuguese people is an integral part of the universal process of social and human emancipation, a process that underwent gigantic liberating advances during the century that now comes to an end.
It is true that there were tragic defeats of socialism and serious drawbacks in the working class and revolutionary movement. And that today we live under the fire of a violent offensive of big business. But nothing diminishes the meaning of those liberating advances, inseparable from the generous and unselfish action of generations of communists and their internationalist co-operation. Nor does it imply, but rather stresses, the profoundly humanist values, ideals and project of the communists.
Learning from experience and attentive to the new realities, we have but one course, to persist! Always with the workers, always with the people, for Democracy and Socialism.
