Press Statement by Jeronimo de Sousa, General Secretary of the PCP

The Central Committee of the Portuguese Communist Party analysed the national political situation, namely the outcome of the first months of the application of the pact of aggression and the recent measures announced by the PSD/CDS government to be included in the 2012 State Budget. It analysed the ongoing struggle of the Portuguese workers and people and pointed out the immediate tasks facing the Party’s organisations and militants.

PCP’s Central Committee considers that the pact of aggression agreed between the IMF/European Union, PS, PSD and CDS, with the support of the President of the Republic, is rapidly deteriorating the living standards of the workers and people, and sinking the country economically and socially. In fact, the application of the pact of aggression, as the PCP has repeatedly warned, leads to a spiral of worsening exploitation and a violent degradation of the living standards, economic recession, greater indebtedness of the country, more extortion of public resources by big business, a greater concentration of wealth and spreading of poverty, unemployment and attacks against democracy and national sovereignty.

The deeply negative trends in the country’s economic situation is patent in the ongoing destruction of the productive sector, in the shrinking of the domestic market, in the rupture of the chain of payments, the choking and ruin of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs.

The economic and social figures are a matter of great concern and enlightening: brutal drops in public consumption and in investment, a regression in production to levels similar to those of 1995, in industry, construction and agriculture, thousands of companies closed and a million de facto unemployed. These figures forecast the economic impact of this policy: a significant contraction of the GDP and a severe economic recession which will now be even deeper as a result of the measures announced this week to the country by the Prime Minister. Measures that are an infamous theft of the workers and our people, affecting not only the Public Administration workers but all the classes, middle strata and anti-monopolist sectors of the population.

This is a course that sinks the country.

The announced measures and what is already known about the intentions of the Government for the 2012 State Budget, confirm the intention to impose the dictatorship of a deficit reduction at a killing pace and a greater, always increasing, exploitation of the workers. Increase in the work day, new thefts of wages and pensions, with the extortion of the Christmas bonus and vacation pay, higher taxes on consumption and labour income, higher prices of electricity, fuel, road tolls, medicines and health payments, cuts in public investment, closure of public services, cuts in social aid, privatisation of public companies are, among other measures foreseen in the pact of aggression which the PSD/CDS government, with the support of the PS, is preparing to carry out, a stronger dose of the poison with which to kill the economy and ruin the country.

Meanwhile, the application of the pact of aggression will result in the extortion of more than 30 thousand million Euros in interest by the IMF and EU, while the process of accumulation, concentration and centralisation of capital in the hands of the major economic and financial groups continues.

PCP’s Central Committee considers that there is under way a new phase in the systematic attack against the democratic regime, accompanied by a very strong ideological offensive. A deeper and more dangerous phase, with new qualitative developments, of regression and settling of accounts with the achievements of the April Revolution, deprivation of rights, freedoms and guarantees.

In an affront to the Constitution of the Republic, besides the increase in working time, they aim to liberalise unfair dismissals, extend working hours, impose a bank of hours, cut in half overtime pay, reduce the duration and amount of unemployment allowance and undermine collective bargaining, dispossessing this right from the trade unions so as to worsen exploitation and target the rights of the workers.

Government’s offensive against the democratic regime intensifies, with the complicity of the Socialist Party, namely through the so-called “Administrative Reform of Local Government”, while pursuing an anti-democratic redrawing of the State and its main functions and powers in the social area, notably in education, healthcare and social security.

It is increasingly clear that the regression of the democratic regime and the destruction of its political, economic, social and cultural content remain the strategic goal of big business and the parties of right-wing policies in pursuing their class interests.

The Central Committee once again reaffirms that the pact of aggression against the workers, people and country, is illegitimate in its nature and content. Because it constitutes a veritable declaration of war against the workers, their living conditions and their dignity, aiming to institutionalise and extend unlimited exploitation, violently attacking their income and rights. Because it is a genuine programme of plunder and extortion of national wealth, by means of a “loan”, or the imposition of privatisations and handing to foreign capital the strategic sectors of the economy. Because it is a colossal organised theft of the workers and other anti-monopolist strata, whose result feeds a bottomless sack of aid and benefits to the banks, for whom is directed the lion’s share of millions of Euros of the hypocritically called “loan”. Because it questions national independence and sovereignty, placing our country under a greater domination by the major powers and big business, in an unacceptable logic of growing dependence and subordination.

It is quite clear that the “memorandum” of the pact of aggression will not solve the country’s problems. And there is a truth that can no longer be concealed: the painful sacrifices demanded on the workers and the people are not to help the country, they are to help the banks!

As the situation in other countries affected by this “aid” shows, the “memorandum” will only deepen the crisis and the economic recession, foreign dependence, unemployment and poverty.

The path of submission and of economic and political colonisation of Portugal, imposed by the pact of aggression, is not a solution, it is a serious problem which has to be fought. It is through the rejection of the pact of aggression, the demand for its rejection, a rupture with the policies that shape it that the country can follow the path of development and progress. That is why, the PCP reaffirms that to reject it constitutes a national imperative, a patriotic goal indispensable to defend the dignity and the living standards of the Portuguese and national sovereignty.

PCP’s Central Committee calls upon the workers and the Portuguese people to once again converge in an increasingly vast current of protest and struggle for the rejection of the pact of aggression, creating a vast popular movement, to bring together all democrats and patriots, with the central aim of saving the country, stop injustice, unemployment and impoverishment of the Portuguese.

The country is not doomed. We need a policy that will impose an effective renegotiation of the debt, a patriotic and left-wing policy whose aims are economic development, raising living standards, defence and promotion of public interest and the rights of citizens, the defence and affirmation of sovereignty, a more developed, fairer and sovereign Portugal is possible.

It is necessary to highlight the party’s intervention, notably in the contribution to inform and mobilise the workers and the people, the success of the “Avante!” Festival and important actions and political and institutional initiatives.

The Central Committee salutes the militants of the PCP and CDU activists who were involved in the complex battle of the Regional Elections in Madeira. A battle marked by several factors of diversion on the key issue of building a coherent and left-wing alternative to the policy and the populist and anti-democratic power of PSD in Madeira. The workers and population of Madeira will need the PCP very much.

In this meeting and given the current situation of the country, and following the defined guidelines and with the goal and demand to reject the pact of aggression and the struggle for a patriotic and left-wing policy, the Central Committee pointed out a set of tasks for the Party’s organisations and militants, with a special emphasis on the need to intervene to develop, broaden and intensify the mass struggle.

In this context, while saluting the workers and the Portuguese people for the wide range of struggles that they have been carrying out and culminated at this stage, in the great action of October 1st, highlights the importance of the week of struggle called by CGTP-IN, to be held from October 20 to 27, while stressing the need to broaden and intensify the mass struggle with its decentralisation and multiplication, with new and stronger actions of convergence.

Hence, the PCP calls upon the workers, the youth and the Portuguese people to mobilise their strength in a great movement capable of defeating the current offensive and ensure a rupture and change for Portugal with a future. A broad mass movement with the workers as its driving force. A united movement that brings together democrats and patriots into a convergence to stop this pact of aggression and disaster and save the country.