Statement by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary of the PCP

Respond to the epidemic outbreak and its economic and social impacts. Fight for an alternative policy

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Presentation of the Communiqué of the Political Committee of the Central Committee of the PCP on the current situation

1- The Covid-19 epidemic outbreak highlights the serious structural problems that mark national life and is being used as a pretext to serve the aims of capital.

The public health measures to combat the epidemic that have to be taken, and that the PCP has supported, have unavoidable economic and social impacts, but their consequences depend on the political options and decisions that are taken.

The insistence on the right-wing policy options will make it difficult to fight the epidemic outbreak, worsen its economic, social and political consequences and is part of the aim to return to the policy of worsening exploitation and impoverishment that characterised the period of the SGPs and the Troika Pact of Aggression.

To combat the impacts of the epidemic outbreak, the advantage taken from it and guaranteeing the country's future, Portugal needs an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy that ensures employment, defends wages and the rights of the workers and people, strengthens public services, promotes national production and ensures investment, necessary for a sovereign path of development.

2- At a time when risks of recession in the main capitalist powers were increasing and there were signs of deterioration in the global economic situation, the global impacts of the epidemic hastened and worsened an already latent reality, giving it a new and deeper dimension.

Whether in health, economic or social terms, the inhuman and exploitative nature of capitalism and its inability to respond to the great problems of humanity are being brutally confirmed.

By instrumentalizing the situation resulting from the epidemic outbreak, big capital sees it at the global level as an opportunity to impose an even more violent exploitation and intensify the attack on rights, freedoms, democracy and sovereignty.

The impacts of the epidemic outbreak are added, in Portugal, to structural problems and deficits accumulated by decades of right-wing policy implemented by successive PS, PSD and CDS governments, which privatised companies and strategic sectors, destroyed national productive capacity, reduced public investment, weakened essential public services, imposed job precariousness and low wages, promoted exploitation and increased external dependency.

Using the epidemic outbreak as a pretext, the economic groups have acted to aggravate exploitation, guarantee profits and speed up concentration and centralisation of capital.

The reality confirms this with hundreds of thousands of dismissals, more than one million workers with wage cuts, arbitrariness in working hours and conditions, appropriation of public resources by economic groups, the liquidation of the activity of thousands of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and small producers, the conditioning of productive activity and of the flow of production.

The reality also confirms the PS government's options contrary to national interests, as well as the use by PSD, CDS, Chega and Liberal Initiative to whitewash their stand and launch reactionary values and conceptions.

3- Portugal needs measures to prevent and contain the virus and to strengthen the capacity of clinical response.

The epidemic outbreak proved the role of the National Health Service as the only and powerful instrument to safeguard the right to healthcare of the Portuguese people. A role that places on the agenda the reinforcement of investment in the National Health Service in the present and for the future, while constituting a clear condemnation of the policy of underfunding undertaken by successive governments.

It is necessary for the government to ensure the necessary means to enable the necessary clinical response. It is necessary to overcome external dependency with the guarantee of national production, namely of clinical material, medicines and hospital equipment.

The PCP also stresses that, for the present and for the future, all other healthcare needs of the populations cannot be neglected by the National Health Service.

The PCP alerts to the ongoing manoeuvres that, under the pretext of the combat carried out by the National Health Service against the epidemic outbreak, contemplate to deliver new valences, functions and public resources to the private healthcare groups, making the right to healthcare dependent on them, their pressure and blackmail. This threat makes it even more pressing to reinforce the National Health Service, namely with the hiring of new professionals, valorising their pay and careers, and ensuring their exclusive dedication to the National Health Service, as well as providing means, equipment and facilities to enable a qualitative leap in the right to healthcare.

Ensuring a safe and capable response by the National Health Service is the main factor of confidence for the population and for the fight against fear and alarmism used to impose economic, social and political setbacks.

4- The right-wing policy options are at odds with solutions that correspond to the interests of the workers and people and respond to the country's structural problems.

The measures announced by the European Union are not only aimed at not guaranteeing the rights of workers and peoples, but will continue to deepen unacceptable asymmetries, inequalities and relations of dependency.

Without answering the immediate funding needs to help the social situation and the relaunch of economic activity, the European Union throws countries towards a debt spiral, associated with the imposition of policies that affect workers and peoples hard.

The options of the PS government and the projects of the reactionary forces, submitted to the Euro and to the impositions of the European Union, represent an obstacle to the implementation of the policy that the country needs and leave an open ground for the interests of the economic groups to determine the path of national life and economy.

The State of Emergency, imposed and prolonged by the initiative of the President of the Republic and with the support of PS, PSD, CDS and BE, being unnecessary and disproportionate in the fight of public health against the epidemic, proved to be a useful tool for capital in its aims.

5- The Portuguese people cannot be held hostage to the impositions, constraints, blackmail and contradictions that corrode the European Union.

Portugal must assume the firm defence of its interests.

It is necessary to free the country from submission to the Euro in conjunction with the renegotiation of public debt.

The Euro represented two decades of economic stagnation, limitations on public services, devaluation of wages and dependence. The country needs to recover instruments of sovereignty, namely in the economic and monetary field, with the liberation of the country from submission to the Euro, a demand that is more unavoidable since the false solution that the European Union imposes - adding debt to the debt - would tie Portugal to decades of economic and social decline.

First and foremost, it is essential to make the guarantee of access to financial resources (large scale) compatible with measures that stop the escalation of the burden of the debt, namely, with the cancellation of the fraction of the public debt issued to respond to the impacts of Covid-19.

It is essential to valorise work and workers.

The country needs a policy that ensures and valorises wages, that ensures job stability and ends precariousness, that fights unemployment, ensures the reduction of working hours and their compatibility with family life. In this context, an ambitious programme to expand and strengthen public employment will be needed.

First and foremost, it is necessary to ensure the payment of wages in full to all workers (using a public fund whenever necessary), forbid dismissals, extend social support, guarantee the protection and defence of the health of the thousands of workers who provide essential functions.

It is necessary to defend and promote national production and the productive sectors.

Portugal needs to diversify its economic activity, promoting in particular industry, agriculture and fisheries, fighting dependencies and deficits that have dragged on for decades and which it is urgent to remedy, replacing imports with national production, guaranteeing food and energy sovereignty.

First and foremost, it is necessary to: guarantee access to support the income of micro and small entrepreneurs; defend small and medium-size farmers and fishermen and their role in national supply; guarantee the income of small producers and the conditions for the flow of production; combat speculation in the prices of essential goods and services and ensure their regulation.

It is essential to guarantee public control of banks, the recovery for the public sector of the basic and strategic sectors of the economy.

The recovery of public control of companies and strategic sectors should carried be out, not socialising losses and privatising profits once again as was the case in the financial sector, but to place companies such as TAP, ANA-Aeroportos, CTT, EDP or REN , as well as sectors such as banking or motorways, at the service of the country's development.

The national situation calls for the need of a strong and dynamic State Business Sector, which extends its intervention to strategic dimensions, alongside the necessary support for micro, small and medium-sized companies and the cooperative sector.

First and foremost, prompt intervention is required to limit and prevent the distribution of dividends by economic groups, the buyback of shares with shares, establish limits and control on the movement of capital.

It is essential to guarantee public administration and services at the service of the people and the country.

It is necessary to encourage a strong investment in Public Services, ending its under-funding, degradation and privatisation. Public investment needs to be designed according to the country's development needs in the most diverse areas - healthcare, social security, education, scientific research, culture, transport, energy, public facilities.

First and foremost, it is necessary to: ensure the hiring of professionals needed for the functioning of public services; guarantee equal conditions for all children and young people in the educational field; ensure social support for children and the elderly and ensure a growing public response; prevent evictions, as well as cuts in the supply of water, energy or communications; ensure full response to problems resulting from lockdown and social isolation; ensure the response to the specific needs of the older population and of those at risk, some of whom are in institutions.

It is essential to have a policy of fiscal justice and combat privileges of big capital.

Fiscal policy is an important instrument for the State to have the necessary funds to ensure the rights of the workers and people and satisfy their responsibilities in the development of the country.

It is necessary to ensure justice in fiscal policy, easing taxation on the income of the workers and people and de facto taxing economic groups.

First and foremost, it is necessary to combat tax havens, put an end to the tax privileges of economic groups, fight tax fraud and evasion, put an end to the thousands of millions of euros of public resources spent on Public Private Partnerships and banks, namely the Novo Banco.

It is essential to defend the democratic regime and compliance with the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, the deepening of rights, freedoms and guarantees, the fight against corruption and the implementation of an independent and accessible justice for all.

The defence of fundamental rights foreseen in the Constitution, which constitute limits and restraints against excesses committed under the pretext of the epidemic outbreak and, at the same time, the basis of the answer that needs to be found to build a sovereign path of national development, is a central aspect.

These are central features of an alternative, patriotic and left-wing policy that responds to national problems and responds to the interests of the workers, the people and the country.

6- The Portuguese Communist Party assumes in the current situation its commitments to the workers and the people, its initiative for the convergence of democrats and patriots, its intervention for a patriotic and left-wing alternative, based on democracy, sovereignty, development and social progress, with policies and a government capable of preventing the collapse of the country, responding to existing serious problems and guaranteeing solutions for a Portugal with a future.

The PCP, in the context of the necessary health prevention and protection measures, stresses the importance, for the present and for the future, of the use of the instruments of intervention and struggle, achieved with April and which the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic enshrines.

For this reason, it highlights the celebrations of the 25th. April - the Solemn Session of the Assembly of the Republic and the popular celebrations with Grândola Vila Morena and the National Anthem sung throughout the country - and underlines the importance of the May Day struggle, organised by the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers – Intersindical Nacional (CGTP-IN), which 130 years later, in 2020, is of the highest significance in the last decades.

The PCP, with its history, its action, its ideal and project, proves to be, as life is once again proving, the necessary, indispensable and irreplaceable Party. The strengthening of the PCP is crucial for the workers, the people and the Portuguese homeland, for development, peace, cooperation, for the international cause of the emancipation of workers and peoples.