A great journey, a great march, a great action for the better life that the workers, people and youth have a right to.
A welcome to all those who are here and to all those around the Country, Party and JCP militants but also many friends, who have been carrying out the national action “Increase wages and pensions, for a better life”.
An initiative that we are continuing here today, a journey of contact, clarification and mobilisation.
But it's also an action of hope for the path that is needed and that responds to the real concerns of the majority, access to housing, healthcare, childcare centres and the rights of parents and children, stop the cost of living that keeps rising, a significant increase in pensions and wages.
And it's because it's linked to the reality of life that this action has gained huge support and already has more than 100,000 signatures, more than 100,000 people who have signed our petition.
We salute all those who have signed, but also the thousands and thousands we have spoken to so far.
And here is the guarantee of a Party that honours its commitments, your signature, your time was worth it and is worth it.
This work will continue until the elections and after the elections and the signatures will be handed in due course, they serve and will serve as a demand for the better life to which you are entitled.
The Country and life cannot stand wages that don't make it to the end of the month, the cost of living that keeps rising, housing that in many cases becomes unaffordable, with unbearable rents and mortgages, the growing difficulties in accessing healthcare, the deterioration of the NHS and all public services, precarious labour determining the precariousness of life, poverty, starting with children.
The Country cannot stand the submission of political power to economic power, with the promiscuity and corruption that goes with it.
The Country cannot be in the hands of economic interests and multinationals, it cannot remain subservient to external impositions. Portugal is a sovereign country, it is not a province or an instrument of the European Union, the US or NATO.
This policy, regardless of who carries it out, does not serve the Country and has to be urgently stopped because of what it has already implemented and what it aims to achieve, with the attack on Social Security, changes to labour legislation for further precariousness, longer hours and more years of work, more privatisations, the destruction of the NHS, the arms race and war.
It is necessary to move forward, it is possible to move forward, it is urgent to give more strength to the CDU and pave the way for the policy of wages, pensions, the NHS and public services, the rights of parents and children and access to housing.
It is possible to move forward, it is necessary to move forward and to give more force to the force of the workers, to the unitary and popular force, to give more force to the force of hope, to the CDU.
As the elections draw nearer, the same old propaganda, promises, demagoguery, proclamations, hypocrisy and reactionarism, but also selective silencing, distortion and manipulation, are emerging.
But at the end of the day, once the propaganda and illusions are over, what will determine is the strength of the CDU, as it does today, and how many MPs who serve the people, the workers and the youth will face off against the MPs who serve the interests of the economic groups.
What will determine it, as it does today, is on whom to count when it comes to making decisions.
And the workers, the youth, those who have worked all their lives, the women, those who live and work here, know, even those who disagree with this or that issue, know that they can count, and only count, on the PCP and the CDU.
The force that doesn't waver, the force that doesn't hesitate.
Between a general and significant increase in all wages and the appropriation of the wealth by a handful of economic groups, we chose the workers.
Between a significant increase in pensions and tax benefits, we chose the pensioners.
Between cutting down VAT on energy, electricity and telecommunications, and reducing corporate tax for large companies, we chose the overwhelming majority of families and micro, small and medium-sized companies.
Between the National Health Service and the economic groups that make a business out of illness, we choose the users, the elderly, the children, we choose disease prevention, we choose the NHS.
Between housing, banks and real estate funds, we choose houses that people can afford and rent.
Between more means, resources and money for war, we choose Peace, children and daycare centres, the elderly and nursing homes, education and public services.
Between the interests of the majority and the privileges of those who think they own all this, we choose the sovereignty of the Country, the defence of its interests, and the workers, the people and the youth at the centre of political action.
The national action “increase wages and pensions, for a better life” is an important movement of claim and strength.
A movement that must continue and will continue, which is expressed here today, but whose demands will be present in the fighting actions in preparation, starting next Friday at the working youth demonstration, just as it will be on April 5 at the national action called by the CGTP-IN, it will be at the popular commemorations of 25th. April and in a structural way at the great May Day struggle.
A struggle that is there until the elections, in the elections and beyond the elections.
With the strength of the workers, with the wisdom of our people, with the creativity and audacity of the youth, we will pave the way for the better life to which we are entitled.
May all those who rightly aspire to that fair life, that better life, know that they can count on the courage and determination of a PCP that is here to denounce and propose, resist and give hope.
And in these complex times in which some are trying to strike a blow at workers' rights and put an end to the achievements of April, here is this force that is truly fighting against reactionary forces and fascist conceptions, here is the force that all democrats and patriots can count on.
