Speech by Rosa Rabiais, member of the CC - 3rd June,Athens 2009

Comrades:

I thank you, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Portuguese Communist Party, for your invitation to be here today and share with you this important moment in the final stretch of your electoral campaign. So doing, I bring you the warm salutes from the Portuguese communists and wishes of great successes in this electoral battle.
Our parties have a long and rich history of cooperation and solidarity. We are together in great battles of our time, on the same side of the trenches in the class struggle. A class struggle that will deepen with the deepening of the crisis of capitalism and that demands from progressive forces in general, and from communists in particular, redoubled efforts, permanent attention, ideological steadfastness, great ability to mobilize and organize towards the struggle, with confidence!

PCP and KKE are parties that know well the dialectical relationship between the intransigent defense of the rights, interests and aspirations of workers and peoples in each of our countries and the importance of cooperation and solidarity in the struggle against imperialism, for revolutionary transformation in our societies, in Europe and the World, and for the construction of socialism as the only, credible and possible alternative to capitalism and its crisis.

For this reason, our Party looks upon these european elections as another important moment in the struggle for the defense of the interests of the workers and our people, for the defense of national sovereignty, for another Europe, of workers and peoples. We can only build another Europe through the participation and will of the peoples, one that will be built upon the ruins of a neoliberal, militarist and federalist European Union, that is increasingly anti-democratic, as demonstrated by the shameful process of imposition of the Lisbon Treaty on the peoples of Europe.
This is why we have defined our electoral campaign in Portugal as a powerful action against conformism and resignation. A process of union of wills around the affirmation of the possibility of real alternatives to the right-wing policies that have presided the destinies of our country over the last 30 years and the process of internationalization of capital in the European continent.
Our political adversaries try, systematically, to push into the trench of those that are against Europe. But we have responded with the force of reason. We say that it is those that insist in a project of a European Union built with its backs to the people, their rights and aspirations, that are against Europe.
Against Europe are those that insist on a European Union that in a time of profound crisis does not present a single structural measure to solve the problem of more than 20 million unemployed, mas is particularly fast at channeling millions of millions of euros to rescue big capital; that is particularly efficient when advancing and insisting on its militarization; that is notably expedite in proceeding with the privatization of public services, in the deregulation of labor relations or even in the criminalization of those that wrote some of the most beautiful pages of history of the European continent, as the communists. We are indeed against this Europe, a Europe of War, of Big Capital, of the directorate of powers, of the pursuit of immigrants.

Comrades
In Portugal, these elections are part of a extremely demanding electoral year, with national and local elections in September and October. Electoral processes that assume special importance in our country given the situation of profound economic and social crisis that our country faces. A crise that forced more that 600 thousand people into unemployment and more than 2 million of Portuguese [a fifth of our population] into poverty. A crisis that is the expression of the internacional crisis of capitalism, but that in our case existed well before. A crisis to with the Portuguese government of the Socialist Party responds to with millionaire support to big capital leaving the laboring and popular masses to their luck, demostrating in practice that social-democracy and the right are siamese twins of the same policy of increasing exploitation and oppression.

But the struggle in Portugal is intense, comrades. The last few years have written important pages in the history of struggle of our people. Another page was written last twenty third of May. We held, with notable success, the largest mass event of this electoral campaign and the largest mass event ever held by a political force in the streets of Lisbon. The "March of Protest, Confidence and Struggle", organized by our electoral coalition – CDU –, with the participation of more than 85 thousand people, was a memorable moment of affirmation of the value and importance of the struggle, and the confidence that we have in the ability of the portuguese people to change our country by their own hands and give continuity to the values and principles of the April revolution. A March in which, together with our joy, we counted on the presence of several delegations of Communist and progressive Parties, among which yours, whose presence we thank.

Comrades:

As we say in Portugal, our struggle advances full of confidence!
I am sure that this is the case as well in Greece, because as in Portugal, so here there is a combative, determined and firm force in the defense of the interests and aspirations of workers and greek people. A force that embodies a real alternative for the peoples that face the crisis of capitalism – Socialism! It for socialism that we struggle, that we will continue to struggle, before, during and after the elections.
Long live international solidary!