The elections for President of the Republic, which will be held at the beginning of 2021, are of the utmost importance, given the national and international context in which they take place and the functions and role of the President of the Republic in national life. Elections that constitute an important moment for the affirmation and defence of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and of the April values ​​associated with it, in which the PCP will intervene with its own voice, endeavouring to place in the Presidency of the Republic someone committed, in words and in acts, to the fundamental Law of the Country.

The right-wing policy carried out during the last decades by PS, PSD and CDS has had consequences in the country's situation that are well-known, in the worsening of social injustices and inequalities and regional asymmetries, putting in question the national cohesion, deepening of its structural deficits and worsening external dependence, loss of sovereignty and jeopardising the country’s development.

A country that is more dependent, more unjust, more unequal, less democratic, which requires a firm, determined, courageous determination - which has been lacking - from those who exercise the functions of President of the Republic.

A country where labour has been devalued, where exploitation has increased and wages and rights have been and are being attacked, where working hours are intensified, while the fortunes of a few increase with each passing year.

A country that has witnessed the depreciation of public services and of the social functions of the State, namely State Schools and the National Health Service, reduced Social Security responses, disinvestment in culture, degraded justice and security of the population, heightened corruption to the extent where submission of political power to economic power increases and the process of privatisation by handing strategic sectors of the Portuguese economy to large national and foreign capital has thrived.

A country where territorial imbalances and environmental aggressions have intensified and continued a policy of pseudo-decentralisation, instead of materialising the constitutional imperative of regionalisation.

At the same time, there was the destruction of our productive capacity, in agriculture, fisheries, industry, the deterioration of the productive fabric and the destruction of jobs and the placing of the country under foreign dependence and of economic activities whose dynamics it does not fully control, in short, weakening our national sovereignty and independence.

Also, the position of abdicating the defence of national interests, so visible in the process of the capitalist integration of the European Union, of submission to the dictates and impositions of the decision centres of the directory of powers, of binding to treaties that prevent the full sovereign development of the country, from Maastricht to the Lisbon Treaty, from the Single Market to the Euro.

The country was harnessed to the interests and manoeuvres of US imperialism and its allies in NATO, to participation in operations of interference and destabilisation against sovereign peoples, placing Portugal in a position of violation of the constitutional principles of defence of peace and relations with all peoples of the world.

Also important is the degradation of the democratic regime, with new obstacles for participatory democracy, particularly for popular participation and, from the outset, of workers, with increasing limitations for political, associative and trade union intervention and activity.

The mandate of the current President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in addition to his intensive public presence, is marked by his commitment to the process set in motion of rearranging political forces, to whitewash the PSD, the right-wing policy and its responsibilities , rehabilitate it politically and bring it back to a role of intense cooperation with the PS, seeking to ensure the conditions for the so-called “central bloc” policy, formally or informally assumed, that has marked the country in recent decades, and is involved in the essential right-wing policy options in favour of big capital and against workers, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and farmers, youth, women.

As the Central Committee of the PCP warned, the drawing near of the elections for President of the Republic has been marked not by what this election represents in its relation to the nature of the functions and the role of that body of sovereignty, but above all by aspects of media coverage of possible candidacies whose objective is marked by personal ambitions, populist drives or projects that aim to rearrange the political and institutional framework over and above what these elections represent.

Valuing, as it always has, the importance of the body of sovereignty President of the Republic, as guarantor of the defence and compliance with the Constitution of the Republic, the Central Committee of the PCP, which decided in its previous meeting to present its own candidate for the 2021 presidential elections , to give voice to the project and values of April, to defend the rights of the workers and people and to affirm social equality and justice and national sovereignty and independence, has decided that the candidate will be João Ferreira, member of the Central Committee.

A candidacy that values the body of sovereignty President of the Republic be it due to the path of who stands - of seriousness, integrity and commitment to the public cause and defence of the rights of workers, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs and farmers and fishermen, women, youth, pensioners and the elderly, people with disabilities, all those affected by the right-wing policies, democracy, sovereignty and peace - be it for the values that he will seek to imprint in the entire electoral battle and that he will assume, if elected, in the Presidency of the Republic.

A candidacy and a candidate who will now be where he has always been and where the Presidents of the Republic have been absent: among the workers and the people, in their struggles for their legitimate rights, interests and aspirations.

A candidacy that will seek to enhance the role and powers of the President of the Republic, set down in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, particularly that of enforcing and obeying the Constitution itself, and that will defend the April Values, enshrined there, as a source of energy and solutions for the answer to the structural problems of the country. That will assume the denunciation of injustices, exploitation, corruption, and the class options that are at the root of favouring the great economic and financial groups. That will denounce the various aspects of the attack on the democratic regime promoted by the most reactionary sectors of Portuguese society at the service of monopoly groups. That will give expression to the aspirations of the workers and the people. That will defend national sovereignty and interests and denounce those who surrender them. That will assume the defence of another society, free from injustices and exploitation, affirming ideals, project and values, for a freer, fairer and more fraternal country. That will act with courage and confidence against fear and resignation.

A candidacy that, being assumed by the PCP, will be the candidacy of the necessary alternative policy for the country and the political alternative to embody it, being therefore the candidacy of all democrats and patriots, of all workers, of all men and women who fight for a fairer, sovereign and developed Portugal.

The Central Committee of the PCP stresses the importance, particularly in the current circumstances, of the commitment of the party collective, of the intervention, initiative and action of every militant in promoting a strong, confident and dynamic campaign of information and contact with the workers and people, denouncing their problems and affirming their rights and aspirations, that assumes the objective of mobilising them for their support and vote.

The Central Committee of the PCP, affirming that this is the moment for all those who are concerned about the course of the country, with the options of the dominant classes and with the growing injustices, of all those who assume the defence of the liberating and emancipatory project of April , to say present, and calls on democrats and patriots to, with their committed support for this candidacy, assume a position of commitment to the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and to a Portugal with a future.