We are here today at one of the many militant voluntary work and get-together days that will precede the Avante Festival, the great festival of freedom and democracy, a great cultural event and the biggest party political achievement carried out in our country.
But this Festival is only possible because our Party is a Party with causes and convictions, with a generous and organised collective, where the values of brotherhood and solidarity are not figures of speech.
This Festival is only possible because here on the grounds of Atalaia there are thousands of free voluntary work hours by militants and sympathisers of the Party, during their leisure time, their holidays, their weekends.
This Festival is only possible because our Party, is not a Party where each one contemplates his navel, with his huge vanity always ready to impose his will on others and where only his opinion and rules matter, but a Party which, valorising the contribution of each militant with his reflection, opinion and intervention, abiding by the democratically decided statutory principles, holds in great value the collective work, does not accept that the minority subjects the majority, and does not accept organized tendencies, with their own leaders and spokesmen.
And that is why we are here today to greet and thank the organisation of the Festival and its builders, the men, women and youth who, with their energy, talent and knowledges will enable, on September 6th, the opening of the gates of Atalaia, thus commencing the great Festival of the people and the youth, who justly perceive it as their undertaking and heritage and which in its more touching and more humane aspects also expresses their posture and the values and ideals that thrust and inspire the intervention and struggle of this great and generous collective, the Portuguese Communist Party.
But the Festival with its human warmth is also a great occasion of affirmation, consciousness and struggle, in this very important year, when we face a great offensive of the right, of counter-reform in health, education, social security. A policy of belt tightening by always the same, the workers and the people and of concentration of wealth by the great lords of finance and speculation.
It is necessary to answer and combat an unfair policy which will particularly affect the young generations of workers, be it through flexibility and deregulation, destroying and amputating rights; either through social security, introducing the law of the jungle - let each one save himself as he can - or by eliminating government-subsidized loans for purchase of homes; or even by means of an economic policy increasingly based upon low wages and precarious labour bonds.
All the just concerns with the anti-popular guideline of government policy were more justified with the announcement, the day before yesterday, by the Council of Ministers of much severe and intolerable changes in the labour legislation which represent a swift and obedient bowing by the PSD and CDS/PP government to the blackmail of German multinationals and old demands by big capital.
Even though the government is the expression of the great interests, a little more decorum and patriotic dignity warranted a different behaviour. What is aimed in the name of productivity is, to further devaluate the work, intensify exploitation and increase the appropriation of surplus value.
And on this matter, the first denunciation to be made is that, if there are thieves who strike at dead of the night, we now have a government which tries to deeply attack the rights of the workers on the sly of the holidays.
The new Work Code that the government announces and tries to impose means, fundamentally, unacceptable regressions in individual work agreements and collective bargaining (with an unacceptable loss of weight and power of intervention by the Unions), further increase in precariousness and deregulation, a more severe regime for night work, further exploitation and more ease in dismissals.
And we draw attention that any sugar-plum which may be purposely mixed with the doses of cyanide contained in the government’s project is only meant for those who, deceived by the sugar-plum, let themselves be poisoned by the cyanide.
The project of labour law change is a severe threat and will face, we are certain, a great rejection by the workers. The Minister of insurance companies and great employers would have been a good Minister of Corporations on 24th. April, with his cynicism, sweet talk and conservatism, but we live in Portugal, which had a 25th. April.
And we are certain that here at Atalaia, on 6th, 7th and 8th. September, the Avante Festival and the closing rally, will constitute a powerful contribution for a wide movement of struggle for inalienable rights and just interests of the workers and a strong and impressive affirmation that the communists and other democrats, men, women and youth of the left, are at the forefront of the defence of the rights of the working people, are at the forefront of the courageous affirmation that these rights are not an obstacle to progress and development but rather an essential condition for progress and development which will serve the Portuguese and Portugal.
In the same line, the government with its majority wants to change the Basic Law of Social Security at the service of financial capital and private insurance companies.
Social Security, as expressed in the present Basic Law is a right and a civilizational conquest because it holds rights and guaranties that defend and protect human life from social risks and adverse political and economic contexts.
What the government aims is to place the most profitable parts of social security and billions and billions of escudos in reserve into the hands of private insurance companies and banks, using the Pension Funds to gamble on speculation of the stock roulette, substituting the certain for the uncertain.
That which is taking place in the US and England, leaving their pensioners in a distressing situation, the accounting scandals involving multinational companies, like Vivendi, World.com, Quest and others which have led to a substantial drop in stocks, the recent dropping of cases involving criminal suspicions on stock operations by Portuguese companies (Unicer, EDP …) are a pointing accusation against those who want to gamble and speculate with the pensions of the workers.
The government has also tried to dramatize the situation of the public accounts and spread a psychology of crisis with two aims.
On one hand to hide its commitments with an irrational Stability Pact to attain a near zero deficit in 2004 and, on the other, to make the workers and middle strata pay the bill for wrong and unfair policies.
With the commitments in relation to the Stability Pact, of PS’s and PSD’s responsibility, and its submissive acceptation, the country is left with a very small margin to carry out policies which, through productive public investment, compensate for the recession factors in our economy.
The country is practically at a standstill with a growth in unemployment and increasing closing of companies, running the risk of entering into recession if the policy of blind contraction is not inverted.
Contrary to the promises made by PSD, instead of getting closer, the country distances from the average level of development of the EU.
In order to try to lessen the negative effects of the rise in prices, namely on the lowlier pensions and wages, the PCP presented in the Assembly of the Republic a proposal to recover their buying power. It was a modest but fair proposal. It should be known that PSD as well as PP dumped their electoral pledges and voted against. PS behaved similarly due to the pledges assumed by its previous government, which otherwise has also dictated its negative behaviour in the areas of health, education, tax reform and even the placing of a ceiling on social security.
From here we would like to greet all those men and women who are in struggle for just demands and aspirations. In the struggle for jobs, for rights, for payment of wages in arrears, for non-closure of companies. And we would also like to greet CGTP-IN and the actions of protest and struggle it has carried out as the great Trade Union Central of the Portuguese workers.
We would also like to greet the workers and the young generations of workers from OGMA, Petrogal, Vestus, former Quimigal, the glass industry, garments, ceramics and so many other companies, as well as the workers from Public Administration threatened by unemployment through the abrupt extinction of services and the “retouched” law of “availables” for placement.
The communists have been all over the country in the small and great struggles and have had a qualified and engaged intervention in the Assembly of the Republic in defence of the interests of the people and the country.
The Prime Minister, in view of the popular protest has often exercised his anti-communism, accusing our Party of being responsible for the protests.
We have to remind the Prime Minister that the responsibility for the protests, the indignation and discontent lies with the policy of his government at the service of the oligarchy and financial capital and that the communists will exercise all their constitutional and legal rights to combat the incorrect and backward policies and that it is with honour that they are at the forefront, side by side with many other citizens of the most different political and religious spheres.
The Prime Minister may be reassured that the Portuguese Party will not turn its back to injustices and prepotences, to the policy of accumulation of wealth, and that it will generously continue to participate and intervene in all the causes which are the reason and being of its existence and life.
The right-wing offensive, the new political framework and the responsibilities we hold before the people and the country demand that this Party strengthen its political initiative, its intervention and influence, which also means the strengthening of its organisation to carry out the decisions of the National Conference, to materialize the National Meeting on “ the strengthening of the Party with the workers” and the National Conference on Local Government.
As you know, the party collective has witnessed with sadness and pain a long, persisting and linking set of attitudes and behaviour from some party members who, at the margin of its normal functioning and presenting themselves as victims, have hurt the PCP’s image and harmed its political intervention and the anonymous effort of thousands of communists who embody most of the Party’s
During these painful six months -six months! Comrades and friends – there were continuous appeals to end their anti-statutory activities, to insert their normal differences of opinion within the normal and logical debate within the party and in line with the rules of internal democracy that they themselves defined, approved and confirmed in the preparation of the 16th. Congress.
In the National Conference, new appeals were made. The answer was regretfully the arrogant public declaration that these activities would continue.
During these painful six months and with great patience and tolerance, the leadership of the Party, even facing the incomprehension of many militants, tried to avoid ruptures and continued to send warnings and drawing attention by several means to the path of confrontation that some were following.
Regretfully, there were those who soon after the 16th. Congress betted on the rupture, trying to assemble discontent and bring to their side the largest number of militants, answering each appeal with a new spiral of confrontation in public.
The great argument that some have used to justify the unjustifiable is that they have been condemned for exercising “freedom of expression”, for “ crime of opinion”, for assuming “divergences”.
As to this:
1st. We have to remember that, even the freedom of expression does not allow the insults and offences such as “terrorist”, “Stalinist”, “clique”, “assault on power” and other delicacies launched against the leadership; neither the disfigurement of positions and guidelines with accusations that the Party “prefers the right”, “prevents a convergence of the left”, “drives PS to the right”, with clear damage to the capacity of attraction of the party’s image, struggle and proposal.
2nd. We have to remember that, there are no crimes of opinion within the PCP. During their years as militants they know very well that their opinion, like that of other Party members, was always included in the Party’s evaluations, conclusions and decisions and was always evaluated on its merit and value and democratically gauged by the different party collectives and not based upon the notoriety of those expressing it.
3rd. We have to remember, and they know it well, that the enrolment in a party is a voluntary act and once admitted each one has a set of rights and duties, and it is inadmissible that anyone wants to preserve all the rights and have no duties or wishes to preserve all forms of public political intervention as if he was an independent.
The “crime of opinion” is invoked to serve as a screen against behaviours and attitudes contrary to the rules of the Party’s functioning. In truth, we are not faced with natural and inevitable issues of opinion or their episodic or loose public expression, but with behaviours and activities with a systematic and prolonged character frontally violating the Party rules, PCP’s ethics and internal democracy.
The party collective witnessed sorrowful successive public initiatives, articulated and previously announced and amplified by the media of clear affront to the statutory norms.
Since the local elections and during these six months, excepting the official electoral campaign for legislative elections, it is almost certain that the main promoters and participants of these activities of confrontation, had a larger presence on television than the leaders of the Party, and not, obviously, to spread the message and the proposals of the Party, but to closely contest its positions, distort its guideline and oppose its legitimate leadership.
According to them, there is no harm in it; the Party does not loose but even gains from this.
This is the impudence of those who know that if they were the targets of this action in the past, the tempers would have long flown.
Does anybody believe that these initiatives had no organizers, were not articulated, that the speeches were not prepared and arranged, so that so and so would appear and speak at the time of the main television news broadcasts?
The party leadership has to be – and has been to the limit – tolerant, patient, understanding and try to avoid ruptures through political means. But it also cannot let the Party, through accomplished facts, bury its rules of functioning, collectively defined and voted, because they constitute an indispensable instrument of support and cohesion of the work of all those who, through a voluntary act, joined this great and generous collective, the Portuguese Communist Party.
It is always sad and painful to have to sanction a member of the Party, but following several appeals to reconsider attitudes and successive attempts to bring declared divergences within the party’s space of debate and political resolution, there were those who clearly opted for continuous and deliberate action of public affront to the Party and the ethical and political values of relationship among communists, and which are essential elements of the cohesion and preservation of its unity and its political initiative and intervention.
We reaffirm that respecting apprehensions and even disagreements which are understandable on such a sensitive, complex and painful matter, we appeal to all party members to contribute, with their opinion and intervention and the strengthening of the bonds of solidarity and mutual respect, so that PCP can carry out with honour and efficiency the increasing responsibilities that the country’s present situation and problems place before it.
With a great effort of convincing, with our engaged struggle, with the generosity of thousands and thousands of men, women and youth who comprise the party collective, this party which is and wants to remain communist, with its popular roots, with its ideology and project, open to life and learning from it, will find the ways to overcome problems, fight for the people and the country, find political and social convergences to defeat the right-wing offensive and build an alternative which will pull Portugal out of the quagmire, continuing the struggle for human freedom and dignity, the deepening of democracy in all its aspects, to overcome capitalism.
The sentences concerning its death, turning wishes into reality, are old and repeated. However, it is difficult to understand why so many pages, so much ink, so many television pictures are spent on a party that is paralysed and dead!
Also old are the false dilemmas: if the Party renovates, it looses its character and merges into social democracy, if it does not renovate, it withers and dies!
The renovation and rejuvenescence in the Party is a requirement and that is done with the analysis of the reality in constant change, not to accommodate or turn into a PS’s subordinate “thing”, but to answer new challenges, organize the struggle, and the struggle for social change, build alternative proposals, with its roots in the workers and the people, knowing fully well that those who question the power of money gets back the offensive of its hold on society. The dominating ideas belong to the dominating classes, as long as they continue to be…
And we are convinced that facing the future, with our work, engaged intervention, our active solidarity with the workers, the populations and the people, reality will end by prevailing over the tide of caricatures, prejudices and distortions we encounter, replaced by a denser, clearer, more open and truer view of our real identity, characteristics and project, about what we really are, think and stand for, in this great Party, humanist and revolutionary, of causes and values, of struggle and of proposal, the Portuguese Communist Party.
