Speech by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary of PCP

Intervention by Jerónimo de Sousa General Secretary of PCP at the Rally Avante Festival

Intervention by Jerónimo de Sousa General Secretary of PCP at the Rally Avante Festival

We commemorate the 40 years since the April Revolution in this «Avante!» Festival, in this Festival which is April.

A celebration of the most advanced and transforming act and process of our contemporary age, in which despite the degree of destruction of its conquests and achievements, its values are still indestructible and everlasting, values of fraternity, militancy, participation, social justice, democracy and socialism, peace and friendship, which anchored in the heart and conscience of the many Portuguese is renewed and rekindled in this «Avante!» Festival, in this Festival of April, with the participation of the youth that, without giving it that name, identifies with the values of the Revolution.

In a time in which the executives of the right-wing policies deny the new generations their right to dream, their right to a job with rights, we want to appeal to the youth that they take into their hands, with the struggle, the demand of another policy that will allow them to build their lives, with the values of April and relying on PCP.

This is a festival that goes well beyond its own borders and the border of our country. We want to salute all those that with their presence transformed Atalaia into the Festival of Internationalist Solidarity and struggle. A warm salutation we transmit to the more than 50 foreign delegations of Communist Parties and other revolutionary and progressive forces present in our Festival.

While saluting those present here, we also salute all the peoples and revolutionary and progressive forces in struggle. To them goes a message from this Party that is here and does not give up fighting for a society free of exploitation of man by man.

A Party determined in contributing to the strengthening of the anti-imperialist struggle, for peace, for the rights, sovereignty and independence of peoples. A struggle that every day acquires an decisive importance and demands the strengthening of the Communist Parties, the International Communist and Revolutionary Movement and the convergence of all the forces that can unite in the struggle against imperialist wars, oppression and the threat of fascism, and the strengthening of the movements for peace and solidarity among peoples.

There were not many moments in world history in which humanity was confronted with such great dangers as today. Imperialist wars and provocations occur at a hellish rhythm. A bellicist rhetoric propagates. The arms race intensifies and aggressive military alliances reinforce themselves, like NATO that these days holds its summit to decide still larger advances in militarism and provocations, namely aimed at the Eastern Europe and the confrontation with the Russian Federation.

The main imperialist powers increasing trample on international law; foment, arm and finance mercenaries and openly fascist and terrorist organizations, which they hypocritically say they wish to combat.

One hundred years after the beginning of the first world war and 75 years after the beginning of the second, the drums of war echo in several regions of the world, from the Orient to Europe, as well as the martyred African continent. These developments represent a very serious threat to peace in the world.
This is the result of the brutal intensification of the imperialist offensive!

We are before a violent militarist offensive. But this is but one of the sides of the dangers we have to face. In parallel, there is the intensification of a brutal civilizational reversal in social, labor and democratic rights of workers and peoples, and a devastating ideological offensive is being developed that aims to manipulate public opinions.

It has been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. At the time, the masters of the world, exalted in their speeches the triumph of capitalism, which would bring progress and peace to the world.

After only this quarter of a century – it is important to remember this – reality has shown us the falsity of their theses and forecasts.
Where are the defenders of the end of the class struggle, of abundance, human rights and democracy?
They double back in justification, explanations, in forecasts that never come true. They continue to talk, but in fact they have nothing new to say to the world. They speak of economic recovery, but then immediately say that more social reversal is necessary to sustain growth – their growth. They speak of democracy, but are the first to repress those that rise to struggle – as in the USA and in the “democratic” European Union – or support fascists who launch persecutions and atrocities, as in the Ukraine. They fill their speeches with human rights, but every day deny them to millions of humans beings and whistle to the sidelines as Israel kills two thousand Palestinians, in just two months, among them 600 children. They speak of fighting radicalisms, but finance and arm, under the table, groups that launch terror, as in Iraq and Syria. They speak of fighting terrorism, but instigate conflicts that leave devastated countries in chaos, as in Libya.

They speak of development, but History speaks for its self. The result of the revanchist campaign of big capital and imperialism against the conquests achieved by the struggle of peoples and the socialist experiences, has resulted in a profound economic and social crisis with no end in sight. There is no propaganda that can hide the disaster towards which capitalism is leading the World, as can be attested by the more than 200 million unemployed, the 843 million with nothing to eat, the 1500 million that live in poverty or the 21 million that are slaves in the XXIst century. This is the reality of capitalism and its crisis!

The world is in war because with the deepening of the crisis, big capital and the large imperialist powers try to counteract their economic decline by using force to submit peoples and maintain their dominion over resources, markets and geostrategic positions. There is no propaganda that can elude us: the cause of war is rooted in the same system that generates it, capitalism.

But, if the dangers are great, there is also great potential before us for the development of an emancipating struggle. Peoples launch powerful resistance campaigns, whole countries confront the criminal strategy of imperialism. Reality is demonstrating that we were right when we affirmed and the end of the USSR and the disappearance of socialism as a world system, radically altering the correlation of forces in favor of imperialism, would mean more injustice, less development, more conflicts and wars, and already many are those that understand this.
They were wrong when they stated that History had reached its end. No! It hasn’t! It is capitalism that is demonstrating its historic limits, and is incapable of answering the needs and aspirations of the peoples.

The future, contrary to the dreary forecasts of 25 years ago, belongs to the struggle of the people, to the action of the forces of progress, to the fulfillment of the communist ideal, to anti-monopolist and anti-imperialist achievements fought for in struggle, and belong above all to the project of communists, socialism, through diverse paths and stages, that is the great perspective before workers and peoples.

From this tribune we want to homage and affirm our deepest solidarity with the people and progressive forces that are in center of the great fights of our time and who demonstrate that it is possible to resist, struggle and even advance. To the peoples of the Middle East that resist aggressions, the blackmail of sectarian division, the interferences and conspiracies of imperialism. In particular, the people of Palestine that is simultaneously martyr and hero, and has just resisted yet another hideous crime of the Zionist power of Israel.

Strong and heartfelt solidarity also with the Ukrainian people, victim of the conspiracies of imperialism to associate that country to the imperialist strategy, victim of a war by a overthrowing and fascist government in Kiev against its own people. Solidarity that we extend in particular to the Ukrainian communists that face political persecution, the terror of fascist hordes and the attempt to illegalize their party. All the peoples and forces are in the front line of resistance, together with the peoples of Africa confronted with several conflicts and attempts to destabilize and colonize a continent massacred by centuries of colonialism and imperialism. A special salute to the struggle of the people of Western Sahara for their self-determination and independence.
But it there is resistance there is also advances. Advances that give us greater trust in the future and certainty that it is always worth struggling.

Therefore we want to give a salute with special enthusiasm to the peoples of Latin America, the protagonists of some of the most advanced processes of social progress and affirmation of sovereignty in the World. A salute together with a commitment to do everything, on this side of the Atlantic, that we can to contribute to defeat the overthrowing maneuvers that attempt, as in Bolivarian Venezuela, to turn the clock of History backwards. Specially warm solidarity to the people of Cuba that reaffirming their Socialist Revolution resist the blockade and the provocations of imperialism and pursue the struggle for the deepening and perfecting of the socialist revolution.

This is reality of the world today. On one side the violent offensive of imperialism, on the other the struggle of peoples in all the continents, and also here in Europe.

Life is demonstrating that those, like PCP, who since the first hour opposed the EEC/European Union e later to the Economic and Monetary Union and the Euro – which is confirmed as a central instrument of exploitation and economic and political dominion, and is at the origin of the profound crisis which we live.

A crisis that exposes with great clarity the irresolvable contradictions and the limits of the process of European capitalist integration.
A crisis to which the European Union reacts very violently deepening the neoliberalism, federalism and militarism, deepening the anti-social character of its policies, attacking democracy, imposing colonial style relations in its midst, and affirming itself increasingly as a political-military imperialist block.
The last years confirm, even more, the path towards a dead end embraced with the right and social-democracy, and the inexistence of solutions for the crisis in the present context of integration.

The question that is posed today is that of taking the necessary steps to invert the current path of Europe. The issue is that the pillars, the instruments, the common policies, the Treaties, the pacts, have been proven to not serve the interests of the peoples of Europe.
Issues that reveal the importance of the struggle of the peoples in defense of a Europe of peace and not a European Union of war. A Europe of cooperation among sovereign States with equal rights, and not a European Union of imposition and domination. A Europe of progress and rights, and not a European Union of poverty and social reversals. A Europe of social convergence, and not a European Union of the dictatorship of capital. A Europe of friendship among peoples, and not a European Union closed to the world.

In Portugal, what today has become an undisguisable reality are the deeply nefarious and dramatic consequences of years and years of right-wing policies, of capitalist recovery of monopolistic restoration in the life of the Portuguese and the situation of the country.

Today, more than ever, the results of years of policies led by governments of the Socialist Party (PS), Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and Popular Party (CDS) is marked upon the life of the Portuguese and the national reality, years aimed at restoring the big economic and financial groups, and strengthening their power and dominion. Policies pursued, in a graver version, with the disastrous and illegitimate decision of imposition upon the country of a Pact of Aggression and extreme interference that, over the last three years, spread destruction and ruin, leaving the country wounded and depleted.
Today, more than ever, the networks of promiscuity in Portuguese society are exposed, involving large economic and financial fraud, corruption, favoritism, that fed the building of a new monopolistic empire and the financial oligarchy that associated the political and economic power, old and new masters of big national capital to foreign capital, who have imposed their law on the Country – the law of concentration and forced centralization of wealth at the expense of the exploitation of labor and the general poverty of Portuguese.

The webs of a policy that delivered strategic sectors of the national economy to national and foreign capital, that led to deindustrialization, the destruction of our fisheries and our agriculture, that led to the a growing dependency of the Country.

We have stated, for some time, certain of our reason, that the policies followed by successive governments of PS, PSD and CDS against April, its achievements, namely against the economic and social structures emerging from the Revolution could only lead to the deep crisis in which the Country is in.

Life is confirming it!
The government in service, the commentators at the service of the right-wing policy who monopolize the political and economic commentary, reciting the charter of the dominating capitalism, can attempt to justify the unjustifiable, subtract and elude the causes of the deep degradation of the national situation and pick out a fact or example from the calamitous economic and social reality that will allow them to create the illusion of a country in recovery to adorn a dark portrait, but every day reality is contradicting them!

Only those who don’t want to see the country drown can see it! That the country’s situation today is worse that yesterday and that, with this policy and path, tomorrow the situation will be worse and more serious!

It’s clear to all that are willing to look that we are living a economic situation of recession and stagnation, in alternation, always adding new bankruptcies to the long list of thousands of destroyed companies. It has been a long time that the country is living off the announcement of false recoveries that are never confirmed. Of proclaimed successes against the foreign deficit and are then revealed to be false, as proven by the significant increase in the commercial deficit on the first half of this year!

There are those who don’t see or don’t want seen that the national GDB took a serious fall over the last three years, following the current rhythm of the economy, we will enter the third decade of the century without recovering. And this means compromising the future of the country and the life of the Portuguese!

The country is continuing to drown under the weight of an unsustainable debt, with repeated historical maxima! We are increasingly being cornered and pushed into a dead end.

Only the unwilling don’t see that as serious as the present, are the problems created for the future of the country, because it is its survival that is in question, with two core issues at stake: the demographic sustainability of the country, with serious problems of child birth, worsened by the massive emigration of the youth; and the marked inability of renewal and modernization of the productive structures and infrastructures, with the successive fall in investment, namely public investment.

Only the unwilling don’t see that there is no inversion in the tragic situation of the country. That poverty is spreading, affecting more the 2.5 million Portuguese that live below the poverty level. That instead of an inversion, we see the violence and drama of cuts in wages and pensions, the loss in value of the minimum wage, unemployment, precariousness, the cruel cuts in social benefits, the brutal increase in taxes, in lost houses, in debts and unrecoverable credit, in electricity and water prices, in hunger that affects hundreds of thousands of Portuguese.
A tragic social situation that will worsen with the degradation of the system of social protection, the subversion and destruction of labor laws, opening the way towards limitless exploitation!

Only those who don’t want to, fail to see that unemployment is still a brutal social wound. That the official rate of unemployment does not correspond to the real unemployment. That more than 350 Portuguese are emigrating every day. A massive exit of people that the country needs and should not relinquish. That what is growing is fictitious employment of temporary training and internships with no future!

Only those who don’t want to, fail to see that the Portuguese are getting poorer and poorer as public services are degraded and destroyed, essential pillars not only to guarantee a life with dignity which we aspire for all Portuguese, but for the development of the country.
The National Health Service is degraded and destroyed, faced in increasing difficulties in guaranteeing a quality service given the brutal cuts imposed upon it, the forced closure of services, the decay of working condition, as the result of a criminal policy aimed at making the right to health of the Portuguese a business!

The conditions of education and the Public School are decaying, lacking in financial, human and material resources that are deliberately denied by a policy that defined as its great objective elitism in education – an education that reproduces social inequalities!

Poorer and unprotected also with a judicial system more distant from the populations that need it, and more expensive, worsened now with the solution of the new Judicial Map, which we opposed.

The populations in the interior of the country are poorer and more unprotected, as agriculture, the forests, the sectors of traditional production are abandoned and simultaneously the populations are deprived of everything: schools, health centers, emergency centers, courts, social security centers, post offices, leaving behind a void of answers to the needs of the populations, worsening the serious phenomena of desertification and demographic regression that are present in the country.

No, Portugal is not in recovery, nor is it searching the paths of progress. The Country is moving backwards!

With this illegitimate and unconstitutional policy it is the prestige itself of the democratic regime that is degraded and being questioned. A policy executed by a government that has the Constitution as a privileged target of its political offensive and its government practice, as a pretext for a confrontation with other sovereign bodies, threatening the regular functioning of democratic institutions.

Looking at the reality of our Country, what the Portuguese can see, with increasing clarity, is a policy of capitalist and monopolist recovery, founded upon privatizations, the financialization of the economy, favoring a casino economy, attacking the national productive sectors and the interests of the Country.
They can see it in the decay of the financial system, the multiplication of scandals and successive frauds, in the banks (/BPN, BCP, BPP) and now with greater evidence in the implosion of the empire of the Espírito Santo family, with its Group and Bank. That empire built and developed, as so many others, under the protection of the successive governments of PS, PSD and CDS.

The bankruptcy of the Espírito Santo Group and Bank, is not merely one more bankruptcy of any business group. It is proof of the failure of the capitalist recovery. A core element and symbol of right-wing politics, the crumbling of the Espírito Santo empire exhibits the failure of the right-wing policy itself.
It is the result of a free for all for the oligarchies that dominate all, that guarantee a reserved seat in the Ministerial Cabinet to decide and impose the Pact of Aggression with its confiscations, extortions and severe austerity for the workers and people.

The policy of “hold on, tighten your belt”, because they wouldn’t hold on. Of the pure and disinterested patriots, with fat bank accounts on the side or half way around the world, but always vehemently proclaiming the defense of the country’s interests. Of the managers, examples of the self-proclaimed excellence and superiority of private over public management. Of the notable and distinguished benefactors, so generous to finance the electoral campaigns of the parties of the “arch of power” – the parties of the arch of the troika, banks and businesses that have governed the country.

They are a good looking glass into the workings of the capitalist system and the result of a policy that favors speculation, unjustified wealth, systematic extortion of the resources of the Country and the Portuguese. It is not by chance that a fourth of the wealth, in Portugal, is in the halds of 1% of the populations. And that 5% has almost 50%. A situation fostered by a political power captured, through an broad and methodical permutation of figures between the economic groups and the spheres of power. Day ago, the Prime Minister Passos Coelho said it was necessary to put an end to the “privileges“ of those many that “live between policis and business, business and politics.” The effrontery.

And then the PSD, the champion party of ministers and secretaries of state bouncing between government, banks and economic groups, followed very closely, it is true, by PS.

What took place and is going on at BES and the Espírito Santo Group is extremely serious, for the government and the Bank of Portugal to wash the hands from their responsibilities, as they intend. Responsibilities that have to be assumed and that the PCP demands are found during the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee that it introduced this week.

But also requires very clear answers about the future of the Bank. A Bank recapitalized with public funds. A Bank and a group that have great responsibilities to its thousands of workers, that have to be safeguarded, but equally a great impact on the national economy.
On our part, on the part of the PCP, we once again reaffirm our opposition to the sale in a hurry and on the cheap of the heritage and assets of the GES companies and the New Bank, until the real and final findings of the situation and responsibilities.

BES cannot be a replay of the BPN!
The solution cannot be the transfer of the 'toxic waste' to the State and of millions of euros of public funds to serve the strategies of large financial groups, all set up to acquire profitable assets at a bargain price!
It is urgent to establish criminal liability regarding the mismanagement by those directly responsible at BES / GES and ensure that their substantial wealth and assets should answer in solving the Bank’s situation!
We must condemn and defeat a policy that has proven not to serve the national interest!
And it is in the hands of our people! It lies in their hands and in the strength of their struggle the possibility of sweeping away from the horizon of their lives those responsible for the continuous sinking of the Country! It lies in the hands of the workers and the people to defend their rights and improve their living conditions!

A struggle that has developed with great intensity and amplitude and which we salute from this rostrum. Struggles throughout the year and which also marked these last months. Huge demonstrations on the streets, strikes and work stoppages. Struggles of workers in companies and sectors, in industry, services, transport and communications, the media, in Public Administration, central and local. Struggles of professionals from security forces and services and of the military. Struggles of farmers, youth and students, struggles of pensioners and retired, the struggle of people with disabilities and struggle of the population against the closure of public services. Struggles against privatizations.

A struggle that has inflicted serious defeats on big business and its servicing government and obtained important results. The workers' struggle, despite all the delaying tactics, restored the payment of the cut of holiday and Christmas bonus, stopped the dimension of the cuts in wages and their perpetuation, defeated the so-called contribution of sustainability in pension cuts, imposed the full payment of unemployment and sick pay, obtained wage increases, protected and applied rights, defended jobs, changed workers with precarious links into permanent ones.

The maintenance or restoration of the 35-hour work week in most municipalities and in many parishes constitutes a major defeat for the Government and the aims of big business regarding the work time and a great victory for the workers.

Struggle, persistence, combativity and results based on the unity and action of their organizations and movements, among which we point out and salute the CGTP-IN!

They sowed the dream of a change, a clean exit, a new cycle with the announced departure of the troika.

They spoke about the end of the protectorate and even set up propaganda and deceiving clocks to mark the time left for the liberation of the country and for the sacrifices.
But as we foresaw and contrary to what was proclaimed, what continues is the same policy of exploitation of the people and the country now under the baton of the impositions of the Budgetary Treaty that PS, PSD and CDS approved and the criteria of the Economic and Monetary Union Pact, falsely called of growth and employment.
The so-called programme of financial assistance by the IMF and associates has ended - but the same policy of theft of wages, retirement pay and pensions, destruction of social rights and labour exploitation, alienation of the assets and resources of the country continues.

It is this prospect that appears for now and they prepare for the future with the complicity of PS binding it to the guidelines and criteria of an economic, monetary and fiscal policy of submission to financial markets and big business.

It is this prospect that Passos Coelho confirms when he states, addressing his supporters in Pontal, Algarve, that "we are still half way through!"
And hence, they waste no time!

They do not even wait for the Assembly of the Republic to reopen. There they are imposing its exceptional functioning for the immediate resumption of wage cuts of Public Administration workers.

This is the prospect of continuing the same policy when they announce, in the name of the dictatorship of the deficit and the throttle of the debt, another 7000 million in new cuts and new measures of extortion and sacrifices until 2019!

New cuts and new measures of liquidation of the rights of the Portuguese that are part of a process that wants to condemn Portugal to a regime of brutal restrictions for yet another three decades.

The same policy of attack on labour rights that is carried out with new amendments to the Labour Code, aiming to slash and destroy collective bargaining.
A whole plan of accumulation of measures of social retrogression, whose main goal is the imposition of an economic model based on low wages and precarious labour without rights.

The same policy with cuts and more cuts aimed at emptying the social functions of the State and an even more drastic reduction of the rights to health, education and social security.

Social security that is on the frontline of the attack by this government with its announced intention to deepen the already started counter-reform of the Social Security and Pension System, not only making permanent the cuts in pensions, but also the continuation of its policy of devaluation of the whole system of social protection, making it residual!

A wide range of measures and projects that are in the portfolio to be managed according to the electoral schedule, with 2015 on the horizon, as suggested by the sowing of illusions and expectations, namely a tax cut in the future and restoration of wages , deceiving many thousands of Portuguese, as they did in the past.

A comprehensive program that aims to perpetuate the policy of austerity and confiscation of the incomes of the popular classes and strata that will deepen the trend towards stagnation of the economy and the systematic strangulation of the activity of small and medium-size entrepreneurs and farmers.

A suicidal program of alienation of the national productive capacity, with their plan of privatization and transfer to the big national and transnational capital of still more strategic companies and sectors.

The country cannot continue on this path of a fast degradation of the living conditions of the Portuguese.

It is necessary and urgent to break this trend of national regression!

Hence, the coming times are of great demands for all those who aspire for a new course for the country. These will be times of struggle, but also of strong political combat and denouncement of all manoeuvres to save the right-wing policy.

Times of struggle on all fronts!

The development, broadening and intensification of the struggle of the workers regarding their demands, claiming action in companies, workplaces and sectors is a key factor. The struggle to defend public services, the National Health Service, public schools, social security and against privatization is essential. The convergence of the struggle of the workers of the various social strata and sectors, based on specific goals and claims, is crucial for the defeat of the Government and to make way for the materialization of a patriotic and left-wing alternative.

The defeat of this PSD / CDS government and the right-wing policy through the struggle and the ballot is the main task for the immediate future of all those who do not accept the course of the economic, social and national debacle that is underway!

We are heading towards the last year of the current legislative term. To defeat this government and this policy, anticipating this defeat, shortening its existence, is a service that is rendered to our people and the country, an urgent necessity and a national imperative!

If faced with a government where every day and every week represents jeopardizing the future of the country, the struggle for its dismissal is an urgent need, it is necessary to state very clearly that as important as dismissing this government, is to ensure the defeat of the right-wing policy, break the cycle of rotativism which has allowed PSD and PS, by turns, with or without CDS on their flank, to impose, year after year - and 38 long and painful years have gone by!

That is why emerge with more topicality the warnings we have made to the Portuguese not to mistake form for content, to distinguish between faces and policies, to conclude from their own experience (an experience made up of ​​so many and bitter sacrifices) that the option they have to make is to contribute with their decision and their willingness to break the right-wing policy and demand, adopt and build an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy at the service of the people and the country.

This is the aim and the priority we take in our hands. This is the deepest aspiration - to see emerging a real possibility of an alternative policy –for which the Portuguese yearn. Not this game of personal disputes pretending differences where all is twin, not this farce about invented future prime ministers as if there were elections for this position, not this monumental scam wanting to transpose to the country the false alternatives that are being cooked.
«The Power of the People, for Portugal with a future - a patriotic and left-wing policy and government" is the motto of an action of political statement that the PCP will launch this coming September.

A national action that will identify t in the coming months the pillars, the objectives and the central priorities of an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy to break the path to the economic and social abyss into which the country is being led.

A national action to establish the contents, a programme and a project for an urgent alternative policy that ensures, enables and materializes the construction of Portugal with a future.

A national action that asserts with confidence that it lies in the people the sovereignty to decide, that with the strength of the people, with their struggle and intervention but also their options and choices, it is possible to bring down decades of right-wing policies and pave the way for a policy linked to the values ​​of April.
A national action built so that more Portuguese see eye to eye with the imperious need of what are the essential factors of a patriotic and left-wing policy: renegotiating the debt; regain public control of strategic sectors and companies, particularly in the financial sector; promote and enhance national production articulated with valorisation of wages and incomes of the workers and people and respect for their rights; the defence of public services and social functions of the State; adopt a fiscal policy that lessens the burden on the income of workers and small and medium-size enterprises, that taxes heavily the income of big business, profits and dividends, financial speculation; rejects the submission to the impositions of the Euro and the European Union.

The rupture with the right-wing policy and the construction of an alternative policy to ensure a more prosperous, just and developed country is inseparable from the struggle for a rupture with the submission to the Euro and the unsustainable debt and the recovery by Portugal of the essential instruments to ensure its economic, budgetary, exchange rate and monetary sovereignty.

Portugal has to free itself from the three constraints that hinder the economic recovery and the cause of the process of social regression - the unsustainable size of public debt and that of the foreign debt, the monetary integration in the Euro and the financial domination by private banks.
The PCP assumes its responsibilities as the great Party of National Sovereignty and Independence, announcing an integrated programme of political action to renegotiate the debt, prepare the country to leave the Euro, regain public control of the financial sector, aspects that constitute a national imperative and a patriotic requirement.

A programme that will start immediately with:
The opening of the action "The strength of the People for Portugal with future" this coming September 28 focused on the debt, the Euro and national interests where will be asserted and presented the essential factors that lead to the liberation of Portugal from the constraints it is subjected to and restore to the country the key levers for its development;

The presentation in the Parliament, at the beginning of the legislative session, of a draft resolution establishing a programme to rescue the country from dependence and decline, aiming to set timetables, conditions and options of national policy with a view to: renegotiate the debt making it compatible with the right to development; the creation of structures in the bodies of sovereignty to study and prepare the country to leave the Euro to safeguard the interests and living conditions of the workers and the people; take decisions that lead to an effective public control of the financial sector by placing it at the service of the interests of the country and of the Portuguese and not of speculation.

The development by the Portuguese State of supported proposals for an Intergovernmental Conference for the revocation and immediate suspension of the Budgetary Treaty, the repeal of the Banking Union, measures aimed at the role of the ECB, the approach of the dissolution process of Economic and Monetary Union and the extinction of the Stability Pact and the creation of a programme to support countries whose stay in the Euro has proved unsustainable as well as the rejection of the EU/USA Transatlantic Trade and Investment Agreement, actions already announced by PCP Members in the European Parliament.

The PCP also announces action on all fronts in defence of sovereignty and independence, in defence of national interests.

An action in articulation with the launching and presentation of another set of proposals aimed at an immediate increase in the purchasing power of the workers, pensioners, unemployed and restoration of the stolen incomes and rights. Proposals for the valorisation of wages and pensions, including the unavoidable increase in the national minimum wage that should have already been updated, in June, to 515 Euros, and the establishment of a timetable to ensure its short term rise to 600 Euros!
The PCP calls for the convergence of all democrats, patriots and men and women who feel that their unity towards a clear programme of rupture with the right-wing policy and an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy is a path under construction. A path that will not result by displaying protagonisms, invented difficulties of dialogue, opportunistic appeals for unity, but the convergence without prejudice or marginalization, of social and political forces, independent citizens, patriots, driven and supported by the decisive development of the struggle of the workers and our people.
Broadenning the debate on an alternative policy, expanding the contribution of many other democrats and patriots to debate on the main axes of this policy, raise the awareness in many thousands of Portuguese not only about the reasons and consequences of the right-wing policy, but especially with the demonstration that there is an alternative - these are the most important and decisive goals of this action.
A proposal and a project of an alternative policy to remove Portugal from the quagmire imposed by the rotation between PS and PSD, always with the promise of new faces, always setting the speedometer back to zero, always looking to benefit from the disappointment that alternately feeds the reproduction of new disappointments, surrender and disbelief to the pleasure of the right-wing policies and its objectives.
No, the country does not need more pacts of regime, be they for a decade or a year, the country does not need more or less intelligent readings of the Pact of Aggression Pact or the Budgetary Treaty, the country does not need engineering operations of electoral laws to artificially benefit the parties on duty to carry out right-wing policies.
What the country needs is to make a break with the policy at the service of economic and financial speculation groups, to stand up and reject the orders of the European Union and Frau Merkel, to see a return to the workers and pensioners of their stolen incomes and rights, reset in national political life the compliance of the Constitution of the Republic and of the values ​​of April.
What the country needs is an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy that answers the aspirations of the workers and the people, the democrats and patriots genuinely committed in ensuring for Portugal a decent life in a developed and sovereign country.
In these difficult, demanding, dangerous times the PCP intervenes decisively, faces difficulties and hurdles, boosts resistance and promotes a rupture, it is the great opposition force against the right-wing policy, the great driving force of mass struggle, the great alternative force, it is the party on whom the workers and the people rely and can rely.
A party that asserts and strengthens on all fronts, social, political and electoral and party organization.
Which asserts, strengthens and acts with the dedicated and determined action of its militants in the companies and in the streets, in the struggles of workers, class and anti-monopolistic strata. Which asserts and is distinguished for its work in the Assembly of the Republic, in the Legislative Assemblies of the Autonomous Regions, in the European Parliament, in Local Government. Which asserts and strengthens at the electoral level. Since the last Festival we fought two important electoral battles - for local government and for the European Parliament. Two important battles that resulted in significant successes for the PCP, the CDU - the political force that grows in terms of votes, percentage and elected members.
Life has proved us and proves us right, our proposals and project fully correspond to the needs, our struggle is the foundation to build the future on the path of April.

For that we must continue to ensure the overall strengthening of the Party!

«More organization, more intervention, more influence - A stronger PCP" is the motto of the ongoing broad action to strengthen the party. Strengthening that translates into action of contact with members of the Party, to increase militancy, hand the new membership card and update data.
Strengthening that means recruiting new militants materializing the campaign to join the Party "The Values ​​of April in Portugal's future." A campaign that is going well. It is with great pleasure that we can now inform you that since the beginning of this year 1100 new comrades have joined the PCP, more than half are under forty years, and a large and significant number of women, 37% of the total number!
Strengthening that requires increased capacity of leadership, to give more strength to the mass struggle, political intervention, structuring the organization and improving its functioning in various areas giving priority to the organization and intervention of the Party among the working class and the workers, in companies and workplaces.
Strengthening of the means of action and intervention regarding the party press, information and propaganda.
Strengthening that requires the defence and affirmation of the financial independence of the Party. Yes, we know that the political and ideological independence of the party, is based on its principles and own political line, but we also know that the political and ideological independence requires a proper organization and ensuring financial resources, equipment, premises to support the political action of the Party.
This is a necessity and a continuous task.

It is also of great meaning that 25 years after the day when the "Avante! Festival” came to have its grounds, this magnificent space, we can affirm in this rally that in the future the Quinta da Atalaia will be joined to the Quinta do Cabo, creating conditions for the expansion of the Festival, for the reorganization of its spaces, for more and a better "Avante! Festival”.

This decision, corresponding to a great aspiration of the Party collective and visitors of the festival, will be achieved by means of a national campaign of funds for this purpose.

In these times of hardship this decision means confidence, confidence in a bigger and better "Avante! Festival” and above all means confidence in the Party itself, confidence in the workers, the youth, the people, confidence in the struggle to break the path of national disaster and build Portugal with a future.

A confidence inseparable from the path and the goals of our Party, its difference at the national political level.
The Portuguese Communist Party, the party of heroic anti-fascist resistance, the party of April, the Revolution, the achievements and values ​​of April, the party of the struggle of resistance against the policy of capitalist restoration, the party of national sovereignty and l independence , the party of today’s combats for a rupture with the right-wing policy, for a patriotic and left-wing policy, of an advanced democracy with the values ​​April in the future of Portugal, with the horizon of a new society.

A party where history, the current struggle and its future role is based on the communist identity that it assumes with honour and conviction. Assumes its nature of a Party of the working class and of all workers, which best protects the interests of antimonopoly classes and strata.

Assumes its functioning principles arising from the creative development of democratic centralism, based on a profound internal democracy, on a single political line and a single central leadership. Assumes its theoretical basis of Marxism-Leninism, its character as a patriotic and internationalist party and its goal of building a new society - socialism and communism.

At a time when the dominant power and the dominant ideology seek to break the resistance and hope, demean the struggle, increase exploitation and injustice, deprive the people from their inalienable right to be the collective player in building a better future for their sovereign homeland, we reaffirm our confidence in the struggle of the workers, in the struggle of the youth, in the struggle of the Portuguese people, that yes, it is indeed possible to set another course that holds the values ​​of April in Portugal with a future.

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