Press Statement by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary, at the end of the Meeting of the CC.
At its meeting on 11-12-February 2011, the PCP Central Committee analysed developments in the national political situation, issues and developments in the international situation, and it considered the mail lines of work to furher the struggle for a break and change in our country . It also adopted a resolution on the PCP's 90th anniversary
The Central Committee placed particular attention on the agenda and goals set by big capital and its power centres ito step up exploitation and liquidate social rights. This agenda and goals are what the PS and PSD [Socialist and Social-Democratic parties] have set out to implement, with support from the CDS/PP [Democratic-Social Centre/People's party] and sponsored by the President of the Republic. They have meant a new and more drastic onslaught against working people's rights, against people's living standards and against national sovereignty. The key building blocks of their strategy are: the recently announced changes to labour legislation – seeking, among other things, to facilitate and cheapen dismissals, deregulate working hours and promote casualisation of labour – as well as an offensive against collective bargaining rights and a hoped-for increase in retirement age. All these taken together will – if they materialise – amount to greater exploitation of labour force.
The Central Committee examined the disturbing developments that, coming from the European Union and counting on cooperation of their accomplices PS and PSD, are being lined up against what remains of our country's sovereignty. In this respect, the debate and general agreement signed at the last European Council constitute a qualitative leap in the centralisation and concentration of political and economic power, and in the European Unio's neo-liberal nature.
The so-called “economic governance” and the draft “competitiveness pact” included in that programme – were they to be adopted and accepted – would amount to an unacceptable interference, to a new offensive against labour income and working people's rights, to more privatisations and alienation of the nation's resources, to new onslaughts against public services and against the social functions of the State.
In a context where big capital appears to still view the PS and its government as the chosen implementors of policies that serve it, the PCP Central Committee reasserts the need for a change of course and an urgent break with the path on which right-wing policies have placed the country. We call attention to the PS and PSD's current manoeuvering to – while supporting the government and spurring it on – distance their image from their own involvement and responsibility in those policies, so as to create new illusions and come up with false alternatives. We therefore call people's attention to all the spin campaigns that – avoiding the PS and PSD's full and well-documented agreement on essential issues – seek to come up with new faces to ensure succession in right-wing policy implementation, at such time as capitalism finds it safest to implement it.
The PCP rejects all campaigns that wave the spectre of a so-called “return of the right wing”, whose goal is precisely ensure stability for the right-wing policies being pursued by the PS and PSD. We reassert that we will use all political and institutional means available to give a voice to the protest and indignation of those who have been hit by these policies, and are fighting, rsisting and demanding other policies: policies based on a real alternative capable of ensuring a better future in a Portugal with progess.
As concerns economic and social developments, the Central Committee notes the disturbing and dramatic deterioration of the situation, as a result of attacks on salaries and pensions, of worsening unemployment, of higher prices, of cuts in social and public services, of difficulty in accessing health care, all of which are driving thousands of Portuguese people into poverty and placing hundreds of thousands of families in ntenable situations.
In a situation characterised by large structural deficits and by a huge foreign debt (both public and private), we call attention to the medium/long-term consequences of the interest rates that are being imposed on the Portuguese State's operations to finance our foreign debt. It is imperative to undertake an economic development policy that can ensure full employment, dignified salaries and the protection and assertion of the nation's productive apparatus.
Casualisation and low salaries, unemployment and a lack of prospects for school-leavers, are leading the whole of a more qualified new generation into a future with no prospects and no way out. To guarantee the right to a life with a future, the PCP will use the upcoming scheduled parliamentary debate on labour legislation to put forawrd a number of initiatives and proposals to advance those rights – rights that must not be denied to younger generations.
In this respect the PCP will table bills to prevent situations where young workers are necessarily subjected to casual labour for the sole reason that they are young, and to prevent situations where growing numbers of young people who are actually filling full-time jobs but are forced to take short-term contracts, temporary work, or fake consultancies, grants or internships. In the specific case of fake consultancies [“recibos verdes”, literally “green receipts” that people have to provide when being paid for such work], the PCP will table table bills to convert these into proper hirings, and where it is the employer that must prove that what is being provided are really temporary services – rather than the current situation, where it is the worker that bears the burden of proving that it is not so.
The PCP will present a National Programme Against Casualisation and Illegal Labour, thus bringing to the fore in Portuguese society the demand for elimination of the social scourge that is casual labour – similarly to what was done with child labour.
The PCP calls upon young people and the younger generations to make use of their rights and fight for their present and their future, for the change that Portugal needs.
Confronted with the worsening of all the nation's problems – and with policies that place the country even more strongly under the threat of a diabolical cycle that always involves new sacrifices for the lower classes and strata of the people – we state that the decisive response that can lead to a break with right-wing polices lies in developing the mass struggle.
Concerning the International situation, the Central Committee extends its solidarity to the people's democratic struggles and uprisings in the Arab World, the Mahgreb and the Middle East. They constitute – regardless of what their outcome may turn out to be – major steps forward toward greater political awareness among the working people and the masses of the people, who are realising the real power they wield. They also constitute a significant setback for US and European imperialism's domination strategy for that part of the world.
The Central Committee condemns the violent repression unleashed against the struggling peoples, and extends its solidarity to the democratic, progressive and revolutionary forces of that region. We extend our revolutionary greetings to the people of Egypt, whose determination and courage have just led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Following this important partial victory, the PCP highlights the dangers that still exist, and the importance of stepping up solidarity with the people of Egypt.
Lastly, from among the wide-ranging work the PCP has before it in 2011, we highlight the PCP's 90th anniversary celebration.
We are proud of the Party's history in the struggle for freedom, democracy and socialism, and of its effect on our present work: connected to real life, to the problems, the yearnings and demands of working people and of the Portuguese people as a whole; connected to the integrated set of demanding tasks that confront the Party. That is why we salute all Party organisations that, throught the country, are preparing their own celebrations. Prominent among these are 5 major events – Lisbon, Oporto, Seixal, Alentejo and Madeira.
In this particularly meaningful year, the PCP speaks to Portugal's workers and people, reasserting its determination to continue the fight for the supreme goal: a socialist society that can incorporate and develop the essential components af an advanced democracy and make workers' and peoples' power a reality. This is a society freed from exploitation of man by man, in which all can have guaranteed rights: to a job, to health, to education, to housing and to a pension, and from which all inequalities injustices, discriminations and social scourges are banished.
