A salute to your militancy and joy. A special salute to the JCP and through you to all students, on this day which marks National Student Day. A salute to all of you for your effort, commitment and dedication, without asking for anything in return, to the cause of the workers and the people.
This is how we are and this is how we fought an election campaign, of great importance and significance, and whose results fell short of expectations.
We carried out a campaign of contact, clarification, expansion and gathering support, we built the result every day, inch by inch and with our own strength alone, we won and secured votes, we had a growing intervention.
It was our determination that faced lies and distortion and contradicted the predictions of the disappearance that have marked our media coverage for months.
And here we are naturally disappointed with the results obtained, they do not serve the workers and the people. Here we are with the entire Party and with the many others who without party affiliation have joined us, many for the first time, analysing the results, the situation created and the current framework.
We don't stick our heads in the sand or wait for the strong winds to pass.
We are facing difficult and demanding times with determination and initiative, but that is the nature of this April force, with the usual courage that the workers, the people and the country need.
We are debating within our own analytical framework and not the one that they want to impose on us, and we are doing so while moving ahead. It is true that the election results created a situation even more favourable to big capital, but it is no less true that the content and mobilisation of our campaign goes far beyond the elections, it projects itself into this struggle that continues, it projects itself in the Party.
It is necessary to take further the implementation of the guidelines of our National Conference.
Guidelines that are expressed in our day-to-day work and had a concrete translation into the campaign we carried out. This is where we go, this is the way.
We need to take advantage of all the possibilities that have opened up and are opening up to strengthen our intervention.
Give more responsibilities to those who stood out, go further in recruiting and assigning tasks, it is necessary to listen and debate with all those who are not yet members of the Party and win them over to this struggle that is worth, and which already has new and challenging demands.
The workers and the people always need, and now even more, a stronger PCP. Yes, all the workers and people, even those who didn't support us this time, know that they count and only count on the PCP.
It's like this every day and it was like this in the contacts made in companies and localities in the last few days, on the journey we took ahead. There we returned to our own people, to those who need it most, telling them, here is the PCP, the April Force, to, with the people, confront, build and advance. These are our people and it is with them that we will move forward and build the alternative that is needed.
And this is so, even though there were thousands of votes for right-wing parties, with all the negative and dangerous aspects of this. Votes based on demagogy, lies and illusion, which deceived and dragged many, once again, towards the false idea of “change”, a change that is in fact demanded, but which will not come, as it never did, at the hands of PSD, CDS, IL and Chega.
From these parties, beyond this or that specific measure, there will only come more favours to economic groups, more attacks on public services, more dismantling of the NHS and Public Schools, more attacks on the democratic regime, more injustice and inequality.
Let no one be fooled by the new narratives that are out there. The fabricated disagreements between PSD, CDS, IL and Chega are just that and only that, fallacies. Whenever it is necessary to guarantee the interests of those who consider themselves to be the owners of all this, there will always be the necessary convergences between political forces that will always find ways to serve those who nourish, create and fund them.
And we arrived here by the hand of the PS, which chose not to respond to the concrete problems of life when it could and was capable of doing so, and is now manoeuvring to affirm its willingness to rectify its own Budget.
But then, what is possible today was not possible yesterday? Were there no conditions, was there no budgetary margin, as we said so many times? There was yesterday, as there is today. The answers were not given because the PS did not want them.
A PS that decided to kneel before the economic groups, fed the most reactionary forces and that, by not responding to the problems, increased the rightful anger and feeling of injustice of millions of workers.
Today we are facing a new political framework.
The President of the Republic appointed the Prime Minister and, at this time, there are two certainties: the first is that a new government will try to take office and the second is that the PCP will, from the first minute, be the firm opposition and will fight it and its anti-social and anti-national policy, with all the means at its disposal.
We will table a motion of rejection of the PSD/CDS Government programme, a strong political signal, a moment of clarification.
Those who do not follow us will have to assume their responsibility, but it is clear that by not following us they are also sending a political signal, those who accuse us of being hasty are the same ones who have already decided, without knowing the Government's programme or its composition, to make it viable.
We do not have or harbour any illusions about what is coming. We know quite well what to expect from the right and we will not have the slightest tolerance for this project that they have long wanted to be able to resume, and now the PS has offered them this opportunity on a platter.
With us, the right-wing project will not go ahead There are no benefits of the doubt or tactical waits here. We are not playing politics, we cannot play with the lives of the workers and the people. With the PCP there are no surrenders or collaboration with reactionary projects and their goals of exploitation and social regression. Here we do not pretend to be opposition nor wishes for the PSD/CDS Government to be strong and stable. Our path is different. We are the opposition, we are the building force, we are here to respond and move forward.
The workers and people need answers to their problems and cannot continue to be deceived. We are the force that promotes convergence to break with right-wing policies and materialise the values of April. Here we are for the general increase in wages; for the extra increase in pensions; for respect and valorisation of workers, for the defence of the NHS with the fixation of professionals; to restore teachers’ service time and put an end to precariousness in schools; to satisfy the security forces, justice professionals, the military and so many others; to guarantee a public network of daycare centres; to fix food prices; to ensure more fiscal justice and lower VAT on electricity, telecommunications and gas; to stop the increase in rents and put banking profits to support increases in interest rates; to guarantee 1% for culture; to defend the environment rather than its commodification; to fight privatisations, corruption and injustice; to defend and enforce the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.
This same Constitution that chooses labour and that subordinates economic power to political power, this Constitution that binds everyone but is far from being a reality in everyone's lives.
The interests and constitutional rights of the people and workers are irreconcilable with the interests of economic groups and multinationals. This is the real confrontation that is there every day. It is for this confrontation and choices that we need to broaden the struggle and bring more people. A confrontation that is not in “theoretical left or right” proclamations, but in concrete choices.
You either choose the interests of the people and workers, or of the economic groups. You either choose the majority or the interests of a minority. You either choose to distribute the wealth that is created and significantly increase wages or maintain and deepen the reality where the richest 10% have more than half of all the country's wealth. You either choose an increase in pensions, investing in the National Health Service, in Public Schools, in transport, in culture, in housing, stopping the increase in prices of essential goods, such as food, putting banking profits to support the increase in interest rates, or whether you choose to bind the country to the so-called right accounts of the EU and big capital. You either choose peace or choose war and the millions in profits for the arms industry.
These are the choices to be made and we clearly challenge the workers and the people to take part in the alternative and to resume the paths that April opened and that the economic groups and their promoters try to close.
It is for this patriotic and left-wing alternative, it is for this project that we call for the mobilisation of all democrats and patriots, it is for this present and future path that we call on the youth to take choices into their hands and around them we call for convergence that needs to be taken forward.
Choices that will be in conflict in the elections for the European Parliament and where, unlike all other parties and forces, the PCP clearly stands for sovereignty and national independence, for the right of the people to decide their path and stop kneeling to the orders of Brussels and the dictates of this European Union that is increasingly bound to the interests of big capital.
It is big capital that, in fact, determines the course of policies, and it doesn't give a damn about the workers and people. Let's go into this electoral battle with the usual people wanting to drag the discussion towards pseudo great issues, old and new fallacies.
They will want to take the discussion away from people's lives and in this way try to cover up their responsibilities for the situation the country has reached.
But the PCP and the CDU are here to bring the discussion to what really matters and to what makes a difference. We are here to make it clear that it is there where they do it, but this is here that they will have to pay. Here we are to debate the consequences of the EU's political choices on everyday life.
Do not count on the PCP to turn a blind eye to what is out there, we do not accept low wages or limitations on investment and public services, in contrast to the colossal profits of multinationals and economic groups.
We do not accept the disastrous consequences of the EU's choices in agriculture, fisheries, in limiting the country's productive capacity. Portugal needs and can produce here what the EU requires us to buy abroad.
For the PCP, it is necessary to fight the business that paints itself as green but where the environment and nature are not priorities; we do not accept the drift that wants to liberalise and privatise everything, including water.
The PCP does not accept placing into other hands what should be decided by the Portuguese people, sovereignly and free from any constraints, whatever their names: Stability Pact, European Central Bank, European Commission, troika, or any other.
For the PCP, facts and evidence cannot be concealed, and the truth is that with the Euro the country only had economic stagnation, wage devaluation, fewer services and public investment. For the PCP, it is necessary to put an end to the escalation of war and prevent our country and the world from being drawn into confrontation, into war, into the arms race.
This path to the abyss must be interrupted. There is only one solution to put an end to the disaster of war – a political and negotiated solution to the conflicts. Here we are to build peace and end war.
We defend the necessary means for the Portuguese military and Armed Forces to fulfil their constitutional mission of safeguarding national independence and sovereignty, but we say clearly that we oppose the channelling of millions of euros into war, into this dangerous arms escalation that is filling the pockets of those who profit from death and human suffering, whether in Ukraine or Palestine.
We want a country that has relations and cooperates with other peoples and countries, instead of a Portugal bound to the interests of the great powers, NATO and the EU. Courage and non-submission, this is what is also required in the fight against the right and the extreme right, against the reactionary forces in Portugal and in Europe and denouncing their connection to big capital, to multinationals, to the shady deals resulting from the privatisations that the EU likes so much, the tax havens that the EU has always promoted, the lobbies and big interests of which the EU is an expression, the single thought with which they want to hide what is really at stake. To face the powerful and defend the values of freedom, democracy, justice and social progress, the values of April that we defend and of which we are key players.
Here we are. We are the force of national sovereignty and independence. The force of democracy, development and social progress. The force of peace, solidarity and cooperation. We are the force of the workers and the people, and we are their voice in the European Parliament.
We need more CDU in the European Parliament, we need more strength for the CDU. The force that is always on the side of those who work, and of those who feel injustice, inequality, discrimination and who are rightly angry, just as we have done every day.
We are going into this electoral battle with the clarity of someone who doesn't confuse priorities, who doesn't give up affirming and acting, bearing in mind that Portugal is our country, that it's in its interests and that of the people, that the defence of rights here in our country are our reason for fighting there in the European Parliament. We are going into this electoral battle with the clarity of someone who associates the defence of sovereignty with the fight for a Europe of workers and peoples.
We are going into the electoral battle for the European Parliament with determination, counting on all the barriers and some more, but convinced and committed, and with accumulated experience, to carry out a great journey of clarification and contact and build an election result for the CDU of great importance for the struggle that is there, intensifying and which is decisive for building, day by day, the alternative that is necessary.
As we witnessed yesterday in the demonstration of women, students, in companies and sectors on March 27. We call for this struggle that determines and decides.
We call for massive popular celebrations of the 50th anniversary of April 25th.
Let us make a great moment of affirming its transforming example, its achievements, its values and its project of the present and future, the April Revolution.
It's time to take to the streets. It's time to take to the streets everywhere and raise high this project for the future that is April.
April is more future, and it is a future that comes to fruition in May. This May Day of workers and of May Day. This powerful journey of struggle that is posed to all workers, this great moment of affirming their fair demands.
The circumstances of intervention in light of the election results are necessarily more demanding, but the youth, the democrats, the patriots, all those who live and work here know that they can always count on the PCP.
They count on this 103-year-old Party, with a unique history, of dedication and struggle against all forms of exploitation and oppression, for freedom, democracy and socialism.
A Party firm in its ideal, which does not abandon its principles. A Party that does not let the dream, the political project, the revolutionary action fall. A Party that faces all the challenges placed before it, with a confident, united party collective that increasingly wants to be a key player and builder. A Party that assumes with conviction and honours its communist identity. A Party to which we are all proud to belong, taking into our own hands the legacy left to us by successive generations of communists.
