Comrades

At the present moment, the political objectives of the PCP's action are a rupture with the right-wing policy and the affirmation of an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy, which goes hand in hand with the defence of the democratic regime and the implementation of the rights and the project enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic.

What, after all, is this alternative policy that has been talked about so much here at this Congress? How can we implement it? What are its contents and objectives?

It has already become clear that this policy is defined, first and foremost, by a rupture.

No amount of mystification can erase this fact: it was the right-wing policy that brought us here - a dependent and subordinate country, a weakened productive apparatus, worrying structural deficits, social injustices, rights undermined, an impoverished democracy

The alternative policy proposed by the PCP is a left-wing policy that promotes not only an increase in national wealth but also justice in its distribution, social progress, better living conditions, equality and the implementation and achievement of new rights.

Let's take a look at some of the objectives and contents of this alternative policy:

- Value work and workers. Raise wages, value careers and professions, regulate and reduce working hours, eradicate precariousness, promote full employment, reduce the retirement age.

- Ensure that the public administration and services are empowered and strengthened, starting with the National Health Service and Public Schools. Prevent and fight poverty. Guarantee access to housing. Democratise cultural creation and fruition. Guarantee the rights of children and youth and to age with quality of life.

- Boost national production and diversify economic activity. Develop industry, agriculture and fisheries, guarantee food sovereignty; invest in research and technological development. Guarantee public control of the strategic sectors of the economy, freeing them from the predatory action of monopolies and oligopolies. Boost investment. Guarantee fair taxation of income and wealth and end the plunder of public resources by economic groups. This is for those who ask us, how we pay for this policy?

- Ensure a cohesive and balanced country, territorial planning, combat asymmetries and depopulation. Preserve nature, ecosystems and biodiversity. Ensure the rational use of resources and safeguard water as a public good.

- Strengthen democracy. Deepen rights, freedoms and guarantees. Fight all forms of discrimination and prejudice. End the domination of economic power over political power and fight corruption.

- Recover instruments of sovereignty. Make full use of the country's potential. Diversify international relations, particularly in economic terms.

- Promote international cooperation and peace. Defend the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the creation of a collective security system, an end to the arms race and the dissolution of political-military blocs.

These are, in general terms, the contents and objectives of the alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy that the PCP is proposing today.

Comrades,

We know that it's not enough to state the contents of the alternative policy, nor to recognise its rightness and relevance. It is necessary to demonstrate its viability, to point out the path that will make it possible.

So, let's do it.

At a time of calls for easy solutions, ready around the corner, let's not deceive ourselves: this policy, which involves a profound transformation of the economic and social situation, implies a substantial change in the current political situation.

The alternative policy, if it is to be materialised, requires a political alternative that is also patriotic and left-wing. This construction is a complex, demanding and potentially lengthy process, which will not be the result of isolated, proclamatory or voluntary acts, but of determined and persistent action.

A construction that requires the confluence of several factors:

- Firstly. The development of the mass social struggle, the driving force behind social transformation, driven by concrete objectives, essential for broadening the awareness of the masses of the need for a rupture and for changing the correlation and arrangement of forces on a political level. Shifting broad sectors of society to the left, whether in the social and electoral base of other parties, such as the PS, people willing to swap alternation for the alternative; or capturing the discontent and revolt that reactionary projects seek to instrumentalise in their favour.

- Secondly. Strengthen the organisation of the workers and popular masses, which is essential to give the struggle a new scope, both to stop setbacks by fighting the right-wing policy and the aims of the reactionary forces, and to achieve progress in terms of rights, freedom and democracy.

- Thirdly. The convergence of democrats and patriots on the basis of a political programme that takes as its starting point the project enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic, capable of attracting the anti-monopoly strata and sectors.

- Fourthly. In fact, the first condition for the necessary political alternative: strengthening the PCP's intervention, organisation and social, political and electoral influence. Much has already been said about this and much more still needs to be done. Multiple scenarios can be conceived, but without the strengthening of the PCP, the aspirations for change that run through Portuguese society will not be materialised.

Just as the PCP is indispensable to the construction of the alternative, it is also indispensable to have a government that gives it expression.

Comrades,

The implementation of an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy is a task of the present.

But as it is in itself an objective of struggle, it is a foothold for other struggles, for other broader objectives.

It is linked to the objective enshrined in the PCP's Programme of building an advanced democracy, at the political, economic, social and cultural levels, projecting the values of April into the future of Portugal.

We wage our struggle with our feet firmly on the ground, we intervene in the concrete conditions, which are those of this time. They are neither static nor immutable. We define objectives that are adequate for each stage of our struggle. The advanced democracy we are fighting for is the current stage of a greater struggle, the struggle for a new society - a classless society, inspired by humanist values, free from all forms of oppression and exploitation, in a framework of a harmonious and sustainable relationship between human beings and nature; a society where the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all; for socialism and communism.

Long live the XXII Congress of the PCP!