Dear comrades and friends,

PSD/CDS´s governance was marked by a gigantic propaganda operation (which continues even though it is a caretaker government, not shying away from using state resources to benefit the PSD and CDS), with successive announcements to hide the lack of response to the problems of the people and the Country. But the government's actions were not just announcements to deceive the people.

It made clear from the outset what it was coming for, and it wasn't to solve the pressing problems felt every day by those who work and have worked all their lives, instead it made them worse, but rather to favour and safeguard the interests of the economic groups, the speculative funds, the multinationals, whom they truly serve, subordinating public interests to private ones.

They have been very diligent in granting new tax benefits to economic groups, in reducing corporate income tax (IRC), which mainly covers large companies, or in exempting them from the Social Security Contribution (TSU), while wages and pensions have been at standstill.

In diverting public resources from the NHS to private healthcare groups, extending privatisation to primary healthcare (with model C Family Healthcare Units (USF), transferring users to the Cascais PPP or contracting with the private sector), the transfer of public hospitals to the Mercy Houses, allowing services to close and increasing the number of users without a family doctor, all because the option is to dismantle the NHS and serve the profits of the Luz Saúde group, CUF, Lusíadas and others, sacrificing the Portuguese people's right to healthcare.

They have also been very zealous in changing legislation to encourage and promote real estate speculation, with changes to land legislation, which encourages promiscuity and corruption, while refusing to protect housing, regulate rents, the result of which is the multiplication of precarious housing.

In the contracting with the private sector of pre-school education, in the reinforcement of funding for association contracts; in the promotion of business regarding the offer of student accommodation; or even the manipulation of figures to hide the insufficiency of the one-off measures they have adopted without any effect, with thousands of students without a teacher for at least one subject.

This government wanted to return to the criminal privatisation package of the troika era. Starting with the privatisation of TAP, which is part of a wider privatisation plan aimed at handing over strategic companies and sectors to foreign capital, increasing dependency and weakening the economy.

This was a government that increased fiscal injustice, with the youth Income Tax (IRS) and the exemption from paying Municipal Real Estate Sales Tax (IMT) and stamp duty on house purchases, aimed particularly at the wealthiest young people, ignoring the majority of young people whose wage is less than a thousand euros, with precarious contracts who can't find a house they can afford.

For this government, the problems have been transformed into yet another opportunity for business and profit for the owners of all this, using every excuse to do so, whether by dragging the construction of the new Lisbon airport to benefit ANA/Vinci, or extending the public-private partnership with Fertagus, for example.

All this while ignoring what needed to be done, what the situation demanded and what the people were clamouring for.

But they were prepared to go even further, had it not been for the government's resignation in the face of the unsustainability of the situation. At the very last moment and already lacking political legitimacy, they decided to create public-private partnerships in five hospitals and 174 healthcare centres for the first time, such was the rush to impose private management, in full obedience to what had been said by the head of a private group a few weeks earlier.

Also underway was the assault on Social Security and its public, universal and solidary nature, which has long been sought after by insurance companies and pension funds; changes to labour legislation to appease big employers, attacking rights and increasing exploitation of workers; the increase in tuition fees; the amendment of the basic law of the education system and the deepening of the interference of private interests in higher education institutions, with the proposal for a law to amend the Legal Framework of Higher Education Institutions (RJIES) submitted to the Assembly of the Republic or the intention to take further steps towards the privatisation of water, as shown in the Water that Unites plan.

It wasn't for lack of warning. From the outset, the PCP denounced the consequences of the right-wing policy options that the PSD/CDS government had set out to implement, and which reality is now proving.

Eleven months later, life is worse. Even if they say that there has been an increase in economic growth, this has not translated into an improvement in the living conditions of those who make the country work. Much to the contrary. It means that a minority continues to grab the wealth produced by the vast majority. Ultimately, at the expense of the sacrifice of workers, pensioners and small and medium-sized entrepreneurs.

The government, following on from what the PS had done before, rejoices with the Budget surplus achieved at the cost of not carrying out the planned investment and a pronounced deterioration of public services.

This is also the government that has aligned itself with the escalation of militarism, confrontation and war. The government of the arms race, of submission to NATO and the EU. A government that, instead of defending Peace and cooperation, pretends not to see the genocide in Palestine, which it still doesn't recognise as a State.

More inequalities and injustices are the legacy of this PSD/CDS government, in which the colossal profits made by the main economic groups, totalling around 32 million a day, contrast with the difficulties of those who earn a wage or a pension that doesn't last the month.

Low wages and pensions, an increase in the cost of living, an attack on rights, the deterioration of public services, difficulties in accessing healthcare and housing, the devaluation of public schools, public disinvestment, limited productive capacity, a deepening of dependency, the undermining of sovereignty - this is the result of the political choices made by the PSD/CDS government, which has always had the support of IL and CH in the main thrust of its policy, and has also had the option of the PS, which made this policy viable, made this Budget viable, and pushed to the limit its willingness to allow it to continue.

This policy is not a solution and is the source of the problems. That's why it's not enough to change the government for the same policy to continue. Life has already shown that the solution is to break with this path and what is needed is not more of the same, what is needed is an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy. An alternative policy that fights inequalities and injustices, that fights poverty, that puts an end to the favouritism of economic groups, that ensures a decent life for workers, pensioners and youth, that ensures healthcare, housing, social protection, education, Peace, for the development and progress of the Country.

It is necessary and possible to implement this alternative policy by strengthening the CDU. It is this alternative policy that the General Secretary of the PCP will shortly be announcing to the country.

Long live the CDU!