In this election campaign, in this journey for a better life, we affirmed the CDU – the [Unitary Democratic] Coalition encompassing the Portuguese Communist Party, the Ecologist Party the Greens, the Democratic Intervention Association and many other democrats and citizens with no party affiliation – as a force of honesty, dignity and confidence.
We salute the CDU activists who made of this election campaign a notable moment in defending the interests of the workers and the people and the values of April [Revolution].
A special reference to the many young people who took part in this CDU campaign and lent it the joy, energy and creativity that are typical of youth.
A word of thanks to all of them for their commitment, which goes far beyond this election.
The result obtained by AD [Democratic Alliance – right wing coalition] in these elections is a negative factor in terms of addressing and solving the problems confronting the workers and the people. It facilitates the path of regression, the attacks on rights and the favours to big business that have always marked the action of PSD and CDS. It increases the serious risks of democratic impoverishment, which are already latent in various dimensions of national life.
In a context in which the discussion and outcome of possible agreements, whether with IL [Liberal Initiative – right wing] or Chega [far right], will fill the media debates, we would like to stress from the outset that this discussion must not conceal what the AD project, and specifically the PSD and CDS programs, represent in themselves. They are a project to attack workers' rights and worsen people's living conditions, wages and pensions, to degrade public services, for privatizations and the attempted destruction of the state's social functions to benefit private business in areas such as healthcare, education, social protection or housing.
These goals, which correspond to the agenda of big capital, are aimed at attacking the democratic regime, the institutions and the Constitution [of the Portuguese Republic] itself.
The result now obtained by AD is inseparable from the choices made by the PS government. The promotion of the right-wing policy over the past few years, and in particular its imposition by the PS absolute majority, generated injustices and legitimate discontentment and dissatisfaction with growing difficulties for the workers and the people. It favoured the demagogic discourse, in particular that of Chega. The absence of responses to crucial problems was used to cover up the past actions of PSD and CDS and their plans to now resume them.
The CDU's result, with a reduction in its parliamentary representation and a percentage below that of two years ago, is a negative development. But it is, nonetheless, an expression of resistance, all the more important and significant given that its construction had to face a prolonged environment marked by hostility and denigration, by a constant falsification of PCP positions, in order to feed anti-communist prejudice and narrow its potential growth, by the promotion of reactionary forces and conceptions and by a fabricated dispute between two candidates for prime minister, seeking to narrow the choice to similar options and to conceal alternative solutions and policies.
The workers and the people can count on the CDU to be as courageous as ever, to defend their rights, to confront the interests of the economic groups and multinationals, and to affirm the values of April and what they represent for a progressive and sovereign Portugal.
We salute all those who placed their trust in, and voted for, CDU. Those who have always voted for CDU and know that they have never had reason to regret it. Those who at some point stopped voting for CDU and are now returning. Those who have for the first time trusted CDU with their vote.
To all of them, and to the Portuguese people, we are here to say the same that we said during the election campaign.
The workers and the people can count on the CDU's initiative and activity to provide answers and solutions to their problems. Wages, pensions, housing, healthcare, children's and parents' rights, women's rights, youth rights, the environment and nature conservation, Peace, will be some of the commitments that we will take from the election campaign to the Assembly of the Republic.
As will our initiative and intervention to confront the right-wing policies and its promoters from the outset, to fight reactionary projects, to defend freedom and democracy.
Initiative and intervention to promote the necessary convergence, to give shape to the alternative policy, affirming our own political project, determined by clear options to break with right-wing policies, confronting the interests of big capital, defending national sovereignty, once again raising the values, achievements and rights that April brought with it.
Initiative and intervention to advance the struggle of the workers and the people, which today, as always, is a decisive factor of resistance, transformation and progress.
This force of April is here, for whatever may come our way, with its permanent courage, to confront, build and move forward.
