Speech by Carlos Carvalhas, General Secretary

About election results of March 17, 2002

On a first appreciation of the results, we stress as an extremely negative fact, the achievement together by PSD and CDS-PP of an absolute majority of deputies, as this represents a very unfavourable evolution of the national political situation, which CDU fought firmly during the electoral campaign.

We outline that the result obtained by PSD and the majority of the right in parliament which, adding PSD's and CDS-PP's deputies will probably occur, are inseparable from the failure of the PS government which, due to the frustration of the hopes created in 1995, allowed PSD, who was an accomplice of the main lines of the PS policy, to capitalize on the discontent and the aspiration for change and which it managed to exploit in its favour, following the dynamics introduced by the local election results.

Although our main concern is centred on the possibility of a dangerous worsening of the policy of the right, which will threaten an important set of social rights and interests of the workers and the people, it is to be noted that the voters denied both PSD and PS the absolute majority they requested.

With total clarity, we assume the results obtained by CDU as negative and removed from the objectives we fought for and the real needs which, in our view, were deemed necessary to favour a change for the better in the national political situation.

However, it is necessary to take into account the clearly unfavourable circumstances we faced in these elections, called following the local elections which were not positive for CDU, and in which weighed heavily a permanent and intense action of devaluation of CDU and the pressure exerted in various forms on the voters in "bipolarising" and concentrating the votes on PS and PSD, with an amplitude and characteristics rarely seen since April 25th. [1974].

Everything suggests that a segment of CDU voters was permeable to the appeals to vote PS to prevent a return to power by the right, in spite of the effort we undertook to explain that these dislocation of votes would not change a bit the result of the right (as the final results confirm) and the votes on CDU would always contribute to the defeat of PSD and CDS-PP.

We greet the effort and self-sacrifice of CDU's activists and candidates throughout this campaign and the determined and courageous way they tried to face the arising difficulties.

In a framework where the possibilities of opening the perspectives of a new policy for the country are seriously jeopardized, CDU stresses its disposition and pledge in pursuing its intervention in the Parliament, and out of it, in defence of the popular rights and interests and being the most solid and coherent voice able to fight the policy of the right and its new offensive against wages and social rights and gains.