What a beautiful and wonderful rally this is! Beautiful and wonderful in the context of a festival which, due to its multifaceted characteristics, is able to convey a unique political dimension of participation, joy, combativeness, meeting of generations and confidence to face forward and cherish the idea that with us nothing is lost, that the struggle is not yet won but can win, that yes, a better life for our country and our people is possible! A beautiful and wonderful rally, in an extraordinary year due to the intensity of the political intervention and action, the seriousness of the economic and social situation, the demanding answer we gave and have to give in the successive electoral battles.

Putting up this Festival was in itself a demanding task, involving a huge commitment from our organizations and our Party collective. What a work it is to put up and hold this Festival with a thousand and one things to do and run! Its true comrades! We toiled beyond our means, beyond our forces, but the key to our secret to overcome our shortages in means and forces lies in our ideals, our convictions and determination that goes beyond what is naturally logical and normally possible.

We salute all the builders, participants, visitors and, in particular, the great force of the youth that marks this Festival as a Festival of the youth! It is also a Festival of April [Revolution], whose thirty five years we commemorate here.

This Festival which is and will always remain a Festival of culture, friendship, fraternity and internationalist solidarity, as once again, in a marked way, was well clear this year. A festival which is a big solidary embrace to all those who, all around this world in various situations, hold important struggles for the present and future of the workers and the peoples, and Humanity itself.

Our Festival is also unique in this field. Unique because here, during these three days, in this beautiful city of struggle, of cultures, of friendship, of democracy, of strength and hope, internationalist solidary has always been present. Whether in the International Space, in the debates and exhibitions held, in the solidarity moments which echoed in various parts of our Festival, in the presence of more than 40 foreign delegations which, in a generous, friendly and solidary manner, and in some cases with great effort and facing the hurdles placed to their voyage to Portugal, were a part of this great and beautiful collective work – which is also yours – the “Avante!” Festival.

To all of them, communist and progressive parties present at this rally today, we would like to express the firm solidarity of the Portuguese communists. We want to assure you that this Communist Party will not leave your side both in the big and small fights against exploitation, oppression and imperialist war and will not refrain from sharing your struggle for the necessary and possible alternative to capitalism and its crisis – for socialism!

From this rostrum we guarantee that this Portuguese Communist Party, with its ideology, its identity, its organization, its struggle and intervention will continue to contribute for the strengthening of our common struggle and for the strengthening of our solidarity and cooperation. This is not a mere salutation of circumstance. It never is! The fact is that in this grandiose rally of the “Avante!” Festival, on this stage, and on the lawns of our Quinta da Atalaia, stands the force, and lives the strength that can make the world move forward.

It is here, in this rally of our Festival, that we have representatives from many of those who, courageously, sometimes even sacrificing their lives, fight and do not yield and give to life and politics the noble meaning it should always have and for which we fight.

It is here, in this rally, that we see many of those, who in different ways resist war and imperialist occupation and do not give up the fight for their independence, sovereignty and the right to development. We have here many of those who in the Middle East and Central Asia – where a change of faces in the North American administration did not lead to any change in its militarist and war policy for the region – transform the dream in a struggle and battle against occupation and war.

Here we have those who for decades fight for their right to a homeland, like the Palestinian people or the people from Western Sahara. Here we have those who continue their struggle for the reunification of their independent and demilitarized homeland, like the Cypriot people. Here we have those who do not give up their right for full independence, sovereignty and development, like the people from East Timor. Here we have some of those who, in the African continent, continue the struggle for their economic and social development and are once again faced with neo-colonialist
intents.

Here we have those who, like the PCP and CDU, fight for another Europe of the Workers and the peoples, and are getting ready to give all their solidarity to the Irish people in their struggle against the Lisbon Treaty which, because of the antidemocratic imposition of the leading circles of the European Union, will once again be subjected to a referendum.

And here we have also those who, very close to us, in the European continent, are once again suffering antidemocratic and anticommunist persecution and to whom we wish to express our firm solidarity and pledge to fight, as so often shown.

Here we have in fact those who are irreplaceable. Those who resist the great dangers that characterize the international situation, and also those who, while resisting, are already making progressive advancements and open avenues of hope in the struggle for social change. They are a proof of the correctness of the thesis we approved in our 18th. Congress, that in the current international situation great dangers coexist with a potential for progressive or even revolutionary advancements.

We salute, with great friendship and solidarity, the forces and peoples from Latin America represented here. Actors of a progressive swell that sweeps the continent, of intense and passionate struggles, of new processes that open new roads for building more just, solidary and fraternal societies.

These are processes which, based upon this simple idea that people have a right to decide their fate and build their future, following examples of courage and determination, like that of Socialist Cuba, are handing back to their peoples their sovereignty, their rights and above all the capacity to believe that yes, a different and better world is possible. Processes which scare those who always looked upon Latin America as their backyard and now, resorting to the old and stale CIA methods, try to stop the march of hope in the continent, as patently clear in the criminal coup d’état in Honduras.

To those who try to muzzle and stop that which will inevitably be the march of Humanity, we affirm, here today, in front of this huge strength bursting in this rally that they will not succeed. They will not succeed because, like the sentence written on the wall of our International Space says:

Solidarity is our strength! And that no one can defeat!

We are holding our 2009 Avante Festival at an exceptional moment in the life of our country. Exceptional because we are living a situation of severe crisis and great difficulties for our people and exceptional because we are facing two important electoral battles – Assembly of the Republic and Local Government – these being an opportunity to change the course of the country and the life in many of our lands, our municipalities and boroughs.

Two electoral battles which represent an immediate priority in our intervention and demand, from each and every one of us, an imperious need to garner all our energies and capacities to dynamize a mass electoral campaign which will continue until October 11.

We absolutely need to act everywhere with the firm conviction and great conscience that the electoral strengthening of CDU we ambition can only be achieved through a great convergence of thousands of actions and collective and individual efforts to win over more Portuguese citizens to our proposals, to make them understand what is at stake and that a vote for CDU is a vote for a real change. We have much work ahead of us, but also much confidence. Confidence in this immense, active and creative force of thousands of men, women and youth, present in that grandiose march of Protest, Confidence and Struggle, gathering more than 85 thousand participants in the centre of Lisbon. This March portrayed CDU as an indispensable force to the country. This great national force that will be present in the candidacies in all electoral circles in the Assembly of the Republic elections and practically in all municipalities of the country for the Local Government elections, for which we stand with the largest number of slates of the last twenty years.

Confidence in this great and vigorous force present in this rally and in our Festival, whose enthusiasm, deep convictions and will, move mountains of determination, work, dedication and struggle. Confidence in the capacity of accomplishment, intervention and mobilization of our Party and our allies. Confidence in the possibility to elect more CDU deputies to the Assembly of the Republic and strengthen our presence with more CDU seats and local government positions.

We have twenty short days before the legislative elections. Elections whose results will determine, to a great extent, the evolution of the national political situation in the coming years. We are going into the coming electoral battle for the Assembly with the firm conviction that many more Portuguese understand the importance of strengthening CDU, following the excellent result in the European Parliament elections, with a new progress, a new CDU growth, with thousands of new votes from new voters.

In the last European Parliament elections the people defeated PS and its government. PS suffered a clamorous defeat and was well defeated. A result which shows a clear condemnation of its policy. A defeat which must once again be confirmed in the elections for the Assembly of the Republic.

But if it is fair, necessary and a condition for a rupture and change to aspire a condemnation by our people, through the vote, of a government and a policy that carried too far the attack against the living conditions of the workers and the people, our great objective, the great and decisive battle we are facing is to ensure the defeat of the right-wing policy.

This policy, which has been executed not only by PS, but also by PSD, by CDS and their governments during the past three decades, have plunged the country to the bottom and to the crisis. A crisis which did not emerge today, nor from outside the borders, but has internal causes, affecting with increasing virulence the life of the majority of Portuguese, as witnessed by the systematic and galloping worsening of all national problems.

The country has been deteriorating sharply, with a fast destructive trend in the national productive capacity and in employment, with a wide impoverishment of the Portuguese. Quite clear and exposed, with increasingly dramatic effects during all the years of the first decade of the century.

We have reached the end of a governing cycle. The PS government ends its mandate leaving the country in deep crisis and with all its main pledges to be fulfilled.

In these almost five years of José Socrates’ PS government, the balance of its governance could not be worse and the consequences more disastrous for the Portuguese. It prolonged the state of stagnation and led the country into recession, a worsening of our chronic deficits, an overwhelming growth of foreign debt and a widespread indebtedness of families and companies.

The economic policy of the government, not only continued to imperil the development of the country, but placed the country farther from answering its three central problems: great deficit in production, very high unemployment and unfair distribution of national income, which worsened once again.

During these years of PS government, all the productive activities continued to decline, while real state speculation and finantialization of the economy flourished. Deindustrialization went ahead. Agricultural ruin continued. In fisheries, a cut down in fleet continued. The crisis also reached other economic activities where micro, small and medium sized businessmen predominate.

The country is now more fragile and frailer than in 2005. José Sócrates has been trumpeting the beginning of the end of the crisis. He wants the Portuguese to mistake a molehill for a mountain until the elections. To live in illusion. To forget that Portugal continues in deep recession and with dramatic social problems. That Portugal retreated with his government. To forget that unemployment continues to rise, creating more poverty, and in real terms affecting more than 625 thousand unemployed. To forget that he curtailed access to unemployment benefits. To forget that he increased precariousness, which today affects 1 200 000 workers.

Problems that particularly penalize the youth. The youth that this government is betting to turn into a generation without rights in labour, education and housing.

Concealing the truth, José Sócrates wants to make believe that the severe problems we face can be solved merely with a change in the international conjuncture. Now that the time of accounting to our people has come, he wants to conceal that the reasons for our backwardness and difficulties lie here, within the country and are a result of a policy which, instead of defending the economy of the country, production, employment and the living conditions of the people, feed the monster of accumulation and centralization of national wealth in the hands of the big national
and foreign groups.

Brandishing once again the eternal argument of combating budget deficit, he continued to cut down wages and pensions, increase taxes, namely on workers, retired and popular strata, cut down essential public services, cut down investment, with this policy leading to an increase in unemployment ad feeding recession.

Sacrifices after sacrifices from the people and ending the mandate with a higher deficit than the one he found and a more unjust and more unequal country. They now claim to be champions of investment. But what they are thinking, and do not say, is that they will resume the same path of sacrifices for the workers and the people, if the people gave them their vote. And now with the added excuse of the crisis.

Comrades, don’t you find it strange that those who bloated the combat against the deficit – PS and PSD – who made this a core issue of their policy to curtail social rights and cut down income from work, now remain so silent?

Do not believe in this silence! Our people better not believe it, so as not to be cheated again! They, both of them, have a hidden agenda and a well kept secret: continue their attack on wages, pensions and public services and impose new and worse sacrifices.

That is why, this coming 27th, we have to say, Enough! And place our vote in the right place, a vote on CDU. No more injustice! Enough! No more policies that always sacrifice the same people. Enough of a policy that blatantly promoted new and unacceptable reversals in the fields of labour and social rights, under the cover of the so-called reforms of modernity.

Reforms that are civilizational reversals, leading to significant steps backward in the field of labour rights, with changes in the Labour Code, as well as in Social Security, imposing criteria of updating and calculating pensions which will perpetuate situations of poverty in old age and make the workers work longer to receive a even lower pension in the future.

It was a concrete prime minister of a concrete government who executed all this. The prime minister who adopted the neoliberal primer of destruction of individual and collective rights as the instructions manual of his governance who now says that PSD never stood so far to the right.

Not this PS! Governed so far to the left that in terms of the Labour Code overtook Bagão Félix [labour minister of the previous PSD/CDS government] on the right. The problem does not lie in the right-wing being coherent and having right-wing proposals. The problem lies in PS affirming to be of the left and undertaking a right-wing policy. The shamelessness is great but the farce is even greater!

Reforms branded as of modernity, which gave cover to a brutal offensive against the right of the populations to health and education and served the PS to unjustly attack the legitimate interests of the workers. This was the case of the unprecedented offensive to weaken the National Health Service and promote privatization and raise the prices of healthcare.

José Sócrates, ever so arrogant, is now distributing smiles and kindness in inaugurations programmed suited to his electoral interests. But we are convinced that the Portuguese people will not forget this rehearsal test of a greater offensive like the shutting down of services to quicken privatization, only prevented due to the struggle of the populations and the fear of electoral consequences.

A project that is awaiting a better opportunity. A project which also has to be defeated this coming 27th. This was also the case with the offensive unleashed against Public Schools and the social and professional dignity of the teachers and destabilized the schools.

José Sócrates now wears a false mask of humility staging a sort of act of contrition in relation to teachers, without recognizing the harm the measures he took has caused.

What teachers what are not acts of false and self-interested delicacy. But the repeal of unfair measures against teachers. Public Administration workers want the same. And that requires we defeat the PS government and the right-wing policy! Were it not for the large struggles, like the huge action promoted by CGTP-IN on March 13th, the action of teachers, nurses, Public Administration workers, the military and police, the working youth and students, the farmers, among so many others, and this PS government would have gone yet further in the global offensive it launched against the interests of workers and all groups and anti-monopolist classes.

A government that worsened the safety of populations by postponing the fight against economic and financial crime, corruption, and political promiscuity. The Portuguese have witnessed during this period the scandalous passivity of the Bank of Portugal and the Government before the frauds of billions of euros in the BCP, BPN and BPP banks.

A government that intensified the attack on democracy and pursued, in a concerted manner with PSD, and attack on the independence of the Judiciary, degrading the exercise of its activities and the access to justice.

A government that promoted a foreign policy that could be summarized with two adjectives: subservience and collusion.

Subservience to big transnational capital the big powers.

Subservience to the progressive abdication of parcels of our national sovereignty that today reveal to be fundamental to face the profound crises the country is going through.

Collusion in the defense of neoliberalism, federalism and the militarism of Europe, as was made clear during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU in 2007 and now in the defense of the Lisbon Treaty and in election, hand-in-hand with PSD and CDS, of Durão Barroso to the presidency of the European Commission. Subservience and collusion with the military policies and war, well demonstrated with the recent reinforcement of the portuguese military detail in the war in Afghanistan. A foreign policy that hitches Portugal to the strategies of domination of the USA and
the great European powers, making it a mere pawn in the chess board of imperialism.

The trajectory of governance of the country all these years demonstrates the equality, in its essence, between the objectives and policies of the governments of PS and PSD. The propagandists of PS and PSD do all they can to elude this identity of policies and objectives and, with the underlining of secondary differences, personal or of style, to give a air of novelty to what is old and has failed, continuing to give life to the
merry-go-round.

But the truth is that their practices have revealed a concordance and convergence in their budget policies, of privatization and liberalization, in their tax policies, in the employment, income and investment policies. If there is something that did not change in government policies in Portugal over these years it is precisely the central nucleus of the policies of PS and PSD. This is what we see in their electoral programs, despite their disguises and camouflage, where they continue to assume the whole heritage of fundamental guidelines – national and from the European community – that have lead to Portugal's backwardness and the crisis.

They have no new and different answer to the problems of the country or for the crisis. For this reason, what is truly at stake in the next election is not to choose between who will apply the usual recipe, if Sócrates or Ferreira Leite, but to know whether we shall have more of the same or if the country will move towards rupture and building a new policy as the one we propose with the reinforcement of CDU.

We life a time of big options. A time that demands courageous decisions. A page-turning period in the countries situation. The country can not pursue the path that is leading to national decline, the accumulations of structural deficits that are stifling us as a sovereign country. The serious problems of the country have a solution.

There is a policy and a model of development that is truly alternative and a force ready to find the paths for putting it in place – PCP and all those that converge in this great left-wing and democratic force that is CDU. This policy and this model of alternative development are in the Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies that PCP presented the country.

A program that foresees a different path for Portugal, based on the principles and values of the Republic's Constitution and that integrates as main objectives: economic development and job creation, the redistribution of income and social justice, the deepening of democracy, and affirmation of
national independence and sovereignty.

A Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies that countermands the economic policies at the service of big capital, with a new policy of economic development at the service of the country and with the following central objectives: full employment as the big priority; economic growth, a significant increase in public investment and the efficacy and efficiency of the use of EU funds, the expansion and energizing of the internal market, the increase in exports, the increase in competitiveness and productivity of Portuguese companies and the defense and affirmation of the national productive sector as the engine of economic growth.

A Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies that countermands the recipes of dominant neoliberal capitalism, with the recovery of the State of its political and democratic command of the process of development of the country through the Business Sector of the State, with its predominant role in the strategic sectors, key condition for the maintenance in national hand of economic leavers that are decisive for the promotion of development and guaranteeing a priority and preferential support of micro, small and medium businesses.

A Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies that assumes the essential pillars of an alternative policy that values labor and workers, through a fair partition of wealth by valuing wages and buying power and increasing the national minimum wage, in defense of work with rights.

A Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies with a new fiscal policy to alleviate the burden of the working class and small businesses, through a broadening of the base and increase of tributary oversight, a significant reduction of fiscal benefits, namely in the financial sector, of decrease of VAT, and a fiscal imposition on housing and stock-market profits.

A Program of Rupture, Patriotism and Left-Wing Policies that countermands a policy that is weakening, privatizing and closing public services, by implementing a social policy directed towards equality, dignity and the well-fare of Portuguese.

A policy of promotion of public serves, namely a quality National Health Service, a Public School that guarantees free full-access of all levels of education, and a stronger public and universal Social Security system, based on a new financing system that guarantees the increase of social pensions and retirement payments.

A new policy at the service of regional development that, breaking with the centralist policy of successive governments, adopts a true democratic reform of the public administration, proceeding to the creation and institution of Administrative Regions and that guarantees a decisive battle against regional asymmetries.

A new policy of effective defense of the democratic regime of April, with a deepening of rights, liberties and fundamental guarantees, a judiciary that is independent, democratic and accessible to all, and a security policy that defends the rights of citizens and public tranquility.

A new policy that guarantees: an effective subordination of the economic power to the political power; and battle and convictions against corruption, economic crime and traffic of influence; the end of privileges to those that hold high positions in the Public Administrations and Companies.

A program that proposes 26 emergency measures that respond to the important needs of the populations and the Country. Measures like changing the negative aspects of the the Labor Code; of the Public Administration legislation; of the Teacher Career; the right to retirement with 65 years of age and the right to retirement without penalizations for those that have contributed for 40 years; same-day access to medical care in the Primary Health Care; elimination of Special Payment by Account; establishment of reference values of interest rates.

Contrary to is affirmed by those that think they are mandated, certainly, by divine right to the monopoly of goverance, this is not the force that limits itself to protest and demaninding. It is a program of a force that has a truly alternative proposal to promote the development the country, a force that is not not only ready to exercise power, but is ready the assume the highest responsibilities in the country.

The country needs truth and, with urgency, of another policy and another government that, coherently, follows through and implements it.

We have said we will be government, if and when the Portuguese people want and when a rupture and a change of policies are imposed by popular demand. This does not imply any pretension to exclusively exercise of governance or the denial of availability of PCP to coverge and cooperate with other political democratic and social forces in seeking solutions in building a left-wing alternative, based on another policy that breaks with the cycle of policies portrayed by PS, PSD and the CDS-PP.

It is not only our availability that continues intact, but our commitment to cooperate with all those that are engaged with seriousness and conviction in a rupture with a right-wing policy.

This means we will not be government at any price, by mere arrangements and artificial agreements thinking mainly on the power-share and positions than on the policy to be implemented, putting aside the commitments we assumed with the people and social forces that aspired, struggled and voted for change and rupture with right-wing policy.

This means you cannot count on this Portuguese Communist Party to implement the same policy that has been followed the last years. But it means more. It means it is in the hands of the people, of their struggle, of their vote – and not the good will of any party directive of the parties that have governed of the country – building the conditions for the emergence of a left-wing alternative truly worthy of this name.

This means there is no change without the reinforcement of those that with conviction struggle for this alternative, like PCP and CDU. For this reason we tell workers and the people, including those that voted in the PS and were defrauded in their aspirations and interests by a government that did the contrary that it announced, to give strength to this Party, to reinforce CDU and the alternative will arrive, all the sooner the greater this reinforcement and support.

We live a time of great mystifications. The PS, which has governed to the right and with the right or its support all these years and that until today has not discarded the possibility of renewal and experience of a central block with PSD, is once again dramatizing the danger of a return of the right to government. It accuses all those that, with PCP, very fairly criticize their governance and demand their responsibility of wanting the right in power.

They insinuate, when they don't say it out right, that those not with PS are with the right. This is not a new kind of blackmail. It is part of the arsenal of resources used throughout the years to perpetuate the political bipolarization of Portuguese life and attract the so-called useful vote. This vote, that PS will make useless as soon as it reaches power, as it did it the mandate that is now ending. But who defeats PS, those that open the doors for the right to regain power are not those that PS accuses, but PS itself, which governs against the workers and the people and in favor of the powerful. It is its own policy at the service of big interests.

If the PS did not, sincerely, want the right in power it would not continue to affirm, as it does, that the "only real alternative is between the PS being called again to form government or the right returning to power", excluding all and any other solution that does not guarantee its hegemonic and bipolarizing pretensions and thus deliberately and consciously leaving the doors to power open to its right.

This is also the logic of mystification that PS promotes and that transforms the elections of the deputies in Parliament into the elections of a prime-minister, putting aside the majorities that are formed in Parliament. It is this logic that sells the idea of a country that is ungovernable without an absolute majority of PS or PSD. And what if the people ask them what absolute majority are good for? This is the logic that needs to be defeated
next 27th of September, defeating the protagonists of the right.

This vicious circle can only be defeated, on the electoral level, with a concentration of votes in CDU. Because the vote in CDU is the most firm and sharp vote in the struggle against injustice and that, in all circumstances, can be counted on to build a better life. Because the vote in CDU is a vote that breaks with cycle of national decline and social regression, and the vote in the force that most struggles for a new policy.

The vote that always counts to defend the interests of workers and the people, to defeat the right and build a true left-wing policy. The vote that the Government, the right and the big economic groups most fear and that most hurts them. The vote in CDU is the vote that rewards those that worked tirelessly in the service of the populations. The vote to elect men, women and youth with past proof and which will not fail in its decision, its proposal and intervention for a better life, for a Portugal with a future. The vote in CDU is a vote that is truly useful for the voter and those that receive it.

We are before important battles to allow a better life for workers and the people. This intense struggle and these important battles, are not separate from our project and our historic role.

The World is witnessing the development of a profound crisis of capitalism, and a clear demonstration of the limits and unresolvable contractions of the capitalist system.

A crises that in Portugal is made felt in a particular manner as a result of 33 years of right-wing policies practiced precisely by those that idolized the system that is at the heart of the international crisis. Or were not the dogmas of a minimum State, of the financialization of the economy, of low wages and restrictions of rights, the same dogmas that presided the actions of the governments of the PS or PSD majority.

The propaganda of the end of the crisis and overcoming the present problems is here, in strength, in Portugal and the World. But the reality is different. The reality is that not only were the propagandized and clearly insufficient measures of regulation adopted. There is still free circulation of speculative activities of big financial capital.

Notice the example of propaganda around the end of the off-shores and the reality today. Not one, not even a single sample for show, was closed. On the contrary, there are successive news, like in our country, of the channeling of billions of Euros to fiscal paradises.

The reality is that nothing has changed in the world economy. Accumulations carries on. Exploitation increases. Poverty and unemployment spread. This is the hard reality of those the truly feel the effects of the crisis of the capitalist system.

A crisis that, as reality is showing, carries with it other dangers, like attacks on democracy, the rehabilitation of racist and xenophobic forces and the development of militarism and war. This is the reality that gives reason to those that, together with PCP, affirm with conviction that the true solution to this and other crises of the capitalist system requires overcoming through revolution the system that exploits and oppresses workers and peoples and that is at the center on insecurity and instability that characterize the international situtation.

This is the reality that leads us to state here, today, that there is a true alternative to capitalism. An alternative born from the will of the peoples. An alternative that guarantees development, justice and solidarity. An alternative that will be built with the people and for the people: socialism!

We are the Party that does not confirm with capitalism and struggles for a more advances stage of organization of human society, with a distinct class and ideological nature, a Party based on principles that allow the working of an unparalleled democracy with the indispensable efficacy to give answer to the problems and popular aspirations and the implementation of its program and project.

We are the Party that, faced with social injustice and national decline, affirms its characteristic of patriotic party that defends national interests and sovereignty, together with its strong committment as an internationalist party.

We know what we are and what we want to be – a Communist Party worthy of the name. The XVIII Congress reaffirmed this option, this identity and this path. The workers, the youth, the people need a force like this one.

A great force of opposition to right-wing policies and the governments that execute it, capable of stimulated and giving impulse to the workers and popular struggle, closely tied to the actions and protests of hundreds of thousands of peoples all over the country.

A great force that in its institutional action fulfills its commitments. With an unparalleled intervention in Parliament, presenting hundreds of legislative initiative and thousands of actions and activities, in a line of work closely tied to country, performed in Parliament and outside its walls, in response to the requests of populations and workers, of denouncing and overseeing governmental policy.

A great force with a remarkable action in local power, based on the municipal project of CDU, with the work, honesty and competency, the structure, the proven accomplishments, the creativity and innovation, a great project for the future.

Let us leave here having before us the decisive battles of the 27th of September and 11th of October. The immediate commitment is in these electoral battles, but our gaze reaches further, knowing there is a path beyond the horizon.

We reaffirm our commitment, always in connection with the problems and concerns of the workers, the youth, populations, sensing their aspirations, living this joys, stimulated their struggles, of pursuing, with greater strength, the fight and the work for a rupture and a change, commitment that demands a stronger, more influential PCP.

The times we live place hardships, obstacles, challenges and, and the same, time, great potentials for advance. The place the unsurpassable demand of, following the conclusions of the XVIII Congress, fulfilling the action "Forward! For a stronger PCP". We are doing so and shall continue. I highlight the advance and reinforcement of PCP in last few years, I salute the continuous flux of new members and wish to salute all the militants and activists of the Party and JCP for their amazing action of dedication to our ideal and project, the interests of the workers, youth and people.

Here from Atalaia and the Avante! Festival, from the space of joy, fraternity and determination, we reaffirm to the workers, the youth and the people of our country that you can count on us, you can count on the Portuguese Communist Party, today and always, for a better life and for a more just society, today and always, for freedom, democracy and socialism.