Speech by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary of PCP - 6th September, Seixal

Welcome to the 37th Avante! Festival.

Welcome to this space transformed into a city built with solidarity and militant work; where experience and wisdom is fused with the generosity and learning of the youth; that frees creativity into art and culture and releases sentiments of peace and solidarity; which gives dimension to politics, in its essence and substance in the service of the workers, people and country.

While we were projecting, planning and building the Festival, particularly during vacation, we had to respond to many demands and priorities, be it in preparing the local elections, in forming the lists of candidates, in the involvement of our Party [and CDU coalition partners] – the Ecologist Party “The Greens” (PEV) and the Democratic Intervention (ID) –, in the participation of thousands of independents that make up CDU as a great inclusive project; be it in holding significant events around the Centennial of Álvaro Cunhal with the dignity and dimension that this major figure of our Party justifies; be it in the political action and intervention in a context of a vast offensive by the Government.

We made this festival when the Portuguese workers and people were engaged in powerful struggles, like the rally in Terreiro do Paço, the two general strikes, struggles in several companies and sectors, that for the first time brought to the fight many Portuguese that are affected and enraged by this policy. Fights that led to irreparable damage, to the isolation and defeat of the Government, which was only sustained and rescued by the protecting hand of the President of the Republic and, once again, by a Socialist Party [PS] that is missing in combat, that dropped the demand for the Government’s resignation and early parliamentary elections, and is only thinking about [the scheduled election in] 2015, expecting that the power fall in its lap, and that with its attitude gave new breadth to the Government and its path of destruction and asphyxiation of the country.

No! We won’t accept that resignation and conformity win, that windows be closed by the wall of inevitabilities, that we wait until 2015 to see what result the elections will bring. We won’t simple witness the new attacks on rights and wages, the erosion of benefits and pensions, attacks on the right to healthcare, education, social protection, on culture itself. And allow me to mention, regarding education, that yesterday the Government decided to take yet another step towards destroying the public school and limiting equality of access to all Portuguese in the several levels of education by introducing the false question of freedom of choice into the law regulating private education.

With this decision, the Government not only ignores the constitutional principle that the school should contribute towards equal opportunity and to suppress economic, social and cultural inequality, but also leads the State towards financing private groups, thus fostering the increasing mercantilization of education and teaching.

All of this is part of the strategic objective of capital and its lackeys to increase exploitation and throw millions of Portuguese into perpetual poverty, in a dependent country, alienated from its sovereignty and in debt.

No one should think that “the worse it gets, the better”, subordinated to some electoral calculation wherein critical positioning is sufficient. What can determine the future is the struggle of the Portuguese workers and people. A struggle of resistance, a struggle based on the defense of concrete rights and legitimate aspirations and interests, a struggle demanding the rejection of this weapon of mass destruction that is the Aggression Pact, struggle that is inseparable from proposals, of a patriotic and left alternative policy, that directs our means, resources and national potential towards production and the productive sector, developing that which was expropriated from the workers and pensioners, their wages, benefits and pensions, affirming health and education, protection when sick and unemployed, in childhood and old age, with rights.

That seeks money where it exists with another fiscal policy on income and capital dividends, in the swap deals, in the excessive rents of EDP, GALP and PT, taxing the fortunes made here and that fly towards offshores, and relieving the small and medium companies.

There is an alternative! And when the people want, then the song «Grândola, Vila Morena», sung here and in so many moments and in so many struggles, will find the verse imagined by Zeca Afonso materialized: «The people are who most ordains!».

And because this value struggle, and salute CGTP-IN’s decision to call for a great national demonstration on the 19th of October, as a great response to what is in store, that which the IMF and foreign troika want to impose, but do not want known before the local elections; that which the Government wants to include in the State Budget for 2014, but does not want known before the 29th of September.

What conditions them? What do they fear?

What conditions them and frightens them is precisely the fact that the workers and populations learn, gain consciousness and struggle to face them and say ‘enough’ to this new wave of assaults that are being prepared.

They want to avoid penalization in the local elections because they fear that, together with the specificities of Local Government, the populations consider the national questions and penalize those that (like the PSD and CDS in government) are making their lives hell, or that (like the PS) do nothing while waiting for 2015. That they identify also through their vote with those that have a project for Local Government, for the workers and populations, those that under the slogan of “work, honesty and competency” guarantees to all those that vote CDU that their vote will be respected, that they are giving strength to achieving their aspirations, to opening paths for change, to charter new horizons for a different policy, and can thus feel not only as voters but as actors for the necessary change.

We have walked far to get here. Enjoy the most that you can from the Festival that, as stated in the newspaper Avante!, is the space with most fraternity by meter square, and that calls upon the best in each of us, a space that during three days fills the heart and the mind, that ‘yes a better life is possible’, with the energy we irradiate as combatants, as constructors, sure that there was and is reason for this Party!

We declare the opening of the 37th edition of the Avante! Festival.

Long life international solidarity!
Long live the youth and JCP!
Long live the Avante! Festival!
Long live the Portuguese Communist Party