We stated during this campaign the unshakable confidence in our work and activity, and in the irreplaceable role that we occupy.
We reaffirm the conviction that the struggle that we wage in defence of the people”s interests and the workers” rights, in building a developed and sovereign Portugal, is as demanding as it is necessary.
We guarantee that it is with our determination, our activity and struggle, that the Potuguese people can count on, in order to defend their rights and build a better life, in a Portugal with a future.
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The CDU is confirmed as the big left-wing force in local government.
The confirmation and even strengthening of the CDU in important municipalities, such as Lisbon, the continuation of a presence throughout the entire territory, with the overall confirmation of our electoral expression, with advances in areas where we are in a minority and the confirmation of our distinctive project of Work, Honesty and Competence, are factors that lay the foundation for this confidence in the future.
To all, to the hundreds of thousands who have confirmed their support and their vote to the CDU, we state here that their vote will be fully respected, as it has always been. To the populations of the municipalities and parishes in which confidence in the CDU”s action has been reaffirmed, as well as in other localities, where elected officials on CDU lists are present, we reaffirm what everyone knows: that there they have a safe guarantee of committed activity to respond to your aspirations.
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Whilst the significance of the CDU”s result is not confined to the number of majorities that were won, it is a fact that the loss of positions, and above all of presidencies [of local government bodies] is above all a loss for the populations, who will soon realize how wrong was their option. It is a loss in terms of the work, honesty and competence which, although recognized, was not duly valued because it was always there. A loss for working conditions in local government, for public service, for the defence of the environment, of culture, for democratic participation.
In those municipalities, as in all others, it is with the CDU that the population can continue to count, in order to defend their interests.
The workers and the people know that we will continue our action every day, giving voice to the peoples, contributing to solve problems, exposing what harms their rights and the collective interests.
They know that we will not abandon local government during four years, only to return a few months before the next elections, when the media spotlights justify a presence.
And, as was seen in the past, in four years” time they will again recognize that the CDU needs to be back, in order to ensure once again for their communities the distinctive management, work and creation to which they have become used.
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We stated during the election campaign that strengthening the CDU was, first and foremost a condition of local progress and development, a renewed guarantee of work, honesty and competence.
But we underscored that the CDU would also be a factor in furthering, in a more decisive way, the restoration and winning of new rights.
This result does not diminish the CDU”s determination - in particular that of the PCP and PEV - to continue their activity and contribute towards new steps that may respond to the interests and aspirations of the workers and the people. It does not reduce the real influence of the PCP and PEV, the recognition by many thousands of their decisive role in the new phase of the political life, the role that they will continue to play in dynamizing the struggle in order to build a path that may ensure the country”s economic and social life.
But it is necessary not to elude the fact that this result is a negative factor, depriving strength to this course.
Nobody can seriously ignore the PCP”s decisive contribution for much of what has been achieved in restoring and winning new rights. Nobody can seriously deny that it is in the PCP and PEV that lies the possibility of ensuring that this course may proceed and expand.
It is clear in these results that even the many tens of thousands who, during this period, spoke words of encouragement for the decisive role of the PCP and PEV in defeating the PSD/CDS government, did not acquire the necessary conscience of the fact that the possibilities of going even further and moving ahead would be above all guaranteed by strengthening the CDU and not the PS.
The political conclusions and lessons that can be drawn must respect this reality. And this is what we do in reaffirming what we have been saying for many weeks.
Let others not be deluded that we will let ourselves be conditioned by electoral results, or have any illusions that we may be guided by any other goal than our commitment towards the interests and the rights of the workers and the people.
Tomorrow we will be here, as we have always been, and with the same confidence and determination, with the sole commitment that, throughout our history, has united us to the Portuguese workers and people.
On a local level, materializing right from the beginning of the mandates, our electoral pledges, guaranteeing work that can respond to the problems of the communities and defending their rights, contributing to management at the service of the population and of local development.
And, in the country as a whole, with our intervention and with the struggle of the workers and the people, to respond to the major issues and carry further the defence, restoration and achievement of rights.
An intervention that can ensure a general increase in wages and an extraordinary increase in the national minimum wage, to 600 euros, already in January 2018; to continue with restoring rights taken from the workers of the Public Sector and the State Entrepreneurial Sector, namely by defreezing wage increases and advancement in careers; to increase old-age pensions, guaranteeing for 2018 a minimum increase of 10 euros; to give new steps in social supports, namely with an end to the cuts in unemployment benefits and by extending family allowances in both their value and their accessibility; to guarantee a fairer tax policy, lowering taxes on working people and really taxing the bigger incomes and the dividends of big business; to increase the quality of public services and strengthen investment, by hiring the professionals that are needed in education and healthcare; to further public investment that can guarantee the right to transportation, overcoming the most blatant insufficiencies of rolling stock and of workers, and expanding the multi-transport social passes; ensuring the right to housing, culture and research; reducing the energy fares, namely the price of bottled gas.
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Allow me to, at this time, to convey a greeting to all members of the PCP and PEV, the Democratic Intervention Association, JCP and Ecolojovem, to the many thousands of non-Party members who, throughout the country, have mobilized and campaigned to vote for the CDU.
Greetings to all those who made the CDU”s campaign a major mass campaign, of contact with the populations, of listening to their problems, of learning through a permanent dialogue.
A campaign that seriously did what it had to do: debate local problems, present and seek the contribution of the population for the necessary solutions, being accountable for the work that was done.
The campaign that respected the purpose of these elections, and which having work in, and knowledge of, local life, did not conceal itself behind collateral issues or the topic of the day. Ours was a campaign of a force that has local rooting and knowing what it talks about and proposes, did not denigrate local government or spread lies in order to promote itself. A campaign which found in the dedication and redoubled commitment of its militants and activists, the conditions to counter a media framework that was marked by prejudice, deturpation and a blatant discrimination of the CDU.
To the many thousands of men, women and young people without Party affiliation that joined the CDU, which made this space of assertion and transformation of the people”s living conditions, allow me to convey words of reiterated availability to proceed, together, in this intervention and struggle, that will build a better future and materialize the patriotic and left-wing policiy which the country needs.
