Speech by Jerónimo de Sousa, Secretário-Geral, Public Session «Freedom and Democracy - The values of April in the future of Portugal»

The PCP will not give up fighting for the materialisation of a democracy that is simultaneously political, economic, social and cultural

The PCP will not give up fighting for the materialisation of a democracy that is simultaneously political, economic, social and cultural

Here we are celebrating the April Revolution in this land that the song, that has become the symbol of April and of a people who love freedom and democracy, chose as the land of fraternity.

The April Revolution brings us here to this square that the people of this land wanted to be a tribute to that unique event in the centuries old history of the Portuguese homeland, just as it continues to gather and congregate with joy the Portuguese all over the Country, because its profound meaning, its values and its ideals not only remain in the memory and in the heart of our people, but are due to their topicality and mobilising capacity a guide for our collective action in the construction of a more fraternal and solidary, freer, democratic and developed Portugal.

We celebrate the April 25 Revolution and, in this act of hailing that glorious dawn and the process that followed, we celebrate the heroic struggle of years and years of resistance and fight against fascism, the sacrifice and the courage of generations of Portuguese.

We celebrate the valorous feat of the captains of April and the popular uprising that immediately broke out, which turned a liberating military action into a process, paving the way for a true democratic revolution.

The April Revolution is the heritage of the people and it is the heritage of the future. A heritage built by the struggle of the workers and the people and to which we communists are proud to have made an unparalleled contribution not only in the long and heroic resistance that led to April, but in all the decisive moments of its construction.

A heritage of great transformations and great achievements, many of which are now envisaged as natural, like the vast set of rights, freedoms and guarantees: the right to life, the moral and physical integrity of the people that fascism called into question.

This odious regime of almost half a century of oppression, economic, social, cultural and civilisational backwardness, illiteracy, mass emigration, international isolation and war, which used violence as a repressive instrument for the protection and support of the terrorist dictatorship of the monopolies and latifundia.

Many and important were the transformations of enormous scope in our collective life, as were the measures taken in favour of the workers in terms of labour and social rights, such as trade union freedom, the right to strike and not to be dismissed without just cause, the National Health Service, so decisive and fundamental in these times of epidemic, which we need to continue to defend and act to strengthen, and also in the fields of education, social security, the right to equality of women in work, in the family, in society, and the rights of the youth.

Great and important achievements and transformations that also brought about changes in the economic structure with the nationalisation of strategic sectors and valued the role of small and medium-sized companies and here, in these lands of latifundia, with the democratisation of access to land and the creation of new forms organisation and administration of work in the fields with the Agrarian Reform, combating the action of the landowners, clearing untilled lands and developing agricultural and livestock production, creating jobs, and up there in the North of the country conquering the right to use and administer the common lands by the people.

Great transformations that allowed the people to conquer the right to decide on the problems of their lands and their development with the institutionalisation of democratic Local Government.

Achievements that ended up being enshrined in the Constitution adopted 45 years ago, by a Constituent Assembly elected on April 25, 1975, in the first free elections and with universal suffrage held in all our history.

We know that the constitutional text we have today does not correspond to the one that was adopted in 1976. Some fundamental aspects of the adopted Constitution of the Republic were eliminated or de-characterised by the joint action of PS, PSD and CDS in an offensive that was not limited to the amendment of the Constitution, but it has also translated into a political and governmental practice of decades of subversion of the conquests of the people and of replacement and reconstruction of the old privileges of the lords of money, monopolies and land.

The list of attacks they have promoted against workers' rights, wages and reforms is long. The list of attacks against the social functions of the State and the rights of the population to healthcare, education, mobility, access to quality services that have been abolished or allowed to degrade and that particularly affect the populations of the inner municipalities is long. The list of measures that led to the regression of the productive sectors and the growth of phenomena of demographic and social regression in a significant part of the country is long.

The deliberate action to restore the power of big capital promoted by the parties of the right-wing policy and capitalist restoration, also translated into a return to the growing submission of political power to economic power and to the emergence of existing phenomena of promiscuity and corruption typical of fascism, where a full fusion between fascist political power and great economic and financial interests was a reality silenced by fierce censorship.

Many of the corruption problems that rightly outrage our people, and which are now expressed also regarding the court case known as “Operação Marquês”, have their real causes in the process of capitalist and monopolistic restoration.

Inherent to the nature of capitalism and its logic of accumulation, corruption is enhanced by a policy of instrumentalizing the State in favour of economic groups and by the network of interests and complicities it creates, which is evident in this revolving door that runs in continuous concubinage of boards of directors of companies and members of governments as we have been witnessing for years, but also due to the absence of real measures to combat this negative phenomenon.

Some of those who have promoted and defended such policies and practices, appear today with a hypocritical talk of false indignation, announcing that the regime is sick. They make the regime responsible to clean their political responsibilities, but essentially to continue to give strength to a project that they never abandoned to abolish the democratic regime and to subvert the Constitution.

Mostly, they are the same or belong to the same parties that avoid recognising and combating the real causes of corruption. Those who, in general, have opposed the set of proposals put forward by the PCP to combat it.

A combat that the PCP has waged at various times with concrete proposals in the Assembly of the Republic: unjustified enrichment that we renewed again, combating off-shores, capital flight and economic and financial crime; strengthening international judicial cooperation; strengthening the means of monitoring and inspection by the State and the competent bodies; reinforcement of mechanisms that prevent members of the government from transferring to the boards of directors of economic groups, tight control over the registration of interests and situations of incompatibilities; strengthening the means of criminal investigation; proposal, now resumed, regarding the prohibition of the State resorting to arbitration in administrative and tax matters, putting an end to the special privilege that is granted to large tax debtors or concessionaires of PPP contracts.

Yes, it is true that many of the main achievements of April were destroyed and the new and old lords of capital again began to amass fortunes in various ways, with the seizure in their hands of the fundamental levers of our economy that began to serve their exclusive interests, while the country has seen deep structural deficits accumulate, a high public debt, worrying social inequalities, deep territorial imbalances and serious environmental problems.

Problems that are worsened today by the epidemic and by the use that big capital makes of it, heightening the exploitation, the poverty of wide popular strata, to serve their immediate interests of accumulation and maximisation of profit.

The figures are there and are undeniable. While poverty and the universe of more than 2 million poor people are growing in this past year of Covid-19. While thousands of workers have been faced with unemployment in the past year and thousands suffered pay cuts during part of the year with the lay-off and thousands of other micro and small entrepreneurs have seen their activities closed and their income dropped. The National Accounts of the Country already released, regarding 2020, tell us that the shareholders and families of the group of companies received 7.4 billion euros in dividends, 332 million more than in 2019. And by looking closely at what is already known, we will see the accounts already disclosed of the 13 economic groups of the so-called PSI-20 operating in the country, we can see that their profits are around 2 260 million euros and that their shareholders have collected almost all of them, 1 938 million, about 85% of the profits, and then they are the ones who appear, through their great confederations, to claim priority access to the millions of this so-called EU bazooka funds. We are talking about NOS, SONAE, BRISA, GALP Energia, EDP, CTT, Jerónimo Martins, Corticeira Amorim, among others. The economy is regressing, but the dividends of the shareholders of the economic groups continue to rise!

The times we live in, in this moment of celebration of the 47th. anniversary of the April Revolution, are not easy times for those who work and for our people.

And that is why, at a time when millions and millions are announced, more than ever it is necessary to integrate their application into a national strategy, directed towards the general development of the country, to reduce asymmetries and to promote territorial cohesion, but also to respond to the many social problems worsened in this time of epidemic, making the support foreseen in the State Budget for 2021 available quickly.

Portugal is one of the countries of the European Union where fewest means were placed to respond to the impacts of the epidemic and with the government putting ahead of the response to people's problems the criteria of the deficit assumed as the top priority, opposing an inexplicable resistance to the reinforcement of support as we have seen in recent days with its appeal to the Constitutional Court on a decision to that effect adopted by the Assembly of the Republic.

In view of a national situation marked by economic and social degradation, where unemployment and poverty are increasingly worrying, but also the reality of low wages, precariousness, what was needed was another more courageous policy in defence of policies of popular interests and not a policy of yielding to the interests of big capital.

Were it not for the action and intervention of the PCP with its initiative and proposal, the situation would be even more serious than the one we see. It was with the intervention and proposal of the PCP that it was possible to ensure, namely, the payment of 100% wages to more than 280 thousand workers under lay-off from the beginning of the year, to renew the unemployment benefit for another six months for more than 40 thousand workers, in 2021, hire thousands of workers in public services or, although insufficient, recognise the rights of parents who accumulate telework with supporting minor children.

Many other proposals and initiatives aimed at responding to pressing problems did not materialise because they were rendered unfeasible as a result of the convergence between PS and PSD, namely in the fight against the epidemic, notably with their refusal of PCP's proposal to diversify the purchase of vaccines, the great option to quickly control the epidemic in Portugal, and finally to end the stop and go lockdowns and the endless states of emergency.

Vaccination, screening, testing and social support are the core features of the response that need to be implemented in order to overcome the health problem that we continue to face and the serious economic and social problems that result from lockdown.

This has been the alternative that the PCP has advocated, and we continue to fight for it to be materialised.

Vaccines are the great solution to the problem of the epidemic in the present and in the long run, a public good of universal interest that must be made available to Humanity to tackle the public health problem that strikes people all over the world.

However, what we see is a policy towing to the interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies, leaving people's lives and health behind.

The recovery of the epidemic's impacts on health, education, the economic fabric, culture, public and private entities, requires a bold response that is urgent and a definition of priorities and criteria that will have to place ahead the interests of the workers, the people and the country.

An answer that will not come, as it never has, neither from the impositions nor from the European Union's criteria and guidelines, including from the so-called Recovery and Resilience Plan that the government presents as the ultimate solution.

The necessary response requires the mobilisation of all available resources - from the State Budget to EU funds or other forms of funding - subject to a sovereign development strategy, which rejects new straightjackets resulting from the Euro contrary to the Country's development.

It requires a policy that ensures the valorisation of work and workers, wages and pensions, combating precariousness, the achievement of the objective of full employment as central elements in the dynamization of the internal market - from which live the overwhelming majority of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises - and of national development.

A policy that boosts national production and responds to delays in terms of infrastructure and equipment; values public services; ensures public control of strategic companies and sectors; the right to culture and sports and leads to the democratisation of their enjoyment as a central element for the well-being of the people.

The Country is not doomed to the policy that has dragged Portugal into dependence for decades and that conditions its development.

In these times of celebration and with April of the April Revolution here on the doorstep, it is once again reaffirmed that the PCP will not give up fighting for a policy according to the Constitution, aiming to materialise the path that it advocates - the construction in Portugal of a democracy simultaneously political, economic, social and cultural.

There are many and important battles in April and it is for April that we are fighting and must continue to fight.

To those who today contemplate their work of destruction and make plans against April, we say: the April project is still part of the Basic Law. Its values continue to be valid and topical.

From economic development with the objective of improving the quality of life of the population and full employment, emerge the values of the fair and balanced distribution of wealth, of the economy at the service of the people and social justice.

From land reform and common lands, the value of the land emerges to those who till it and the ancestral community value of the land.

From nationalisations, emerges the value, the necessity and the possibility of putting an end to the power of monopolies.

From labour rights emerges the value of work and workers.

From the State to respond to the country's needs as opposed to the State that we have as an instrument of a few, emerges the value of the State at the service of the people.

From the national independence and sovereignty, emerges the value of the Portuguese people to decide their future and that of their homeland.

These values that Abril showed to be theirs, as theirs are those that emerge from their great achievements and accomplishments, not only continue to portray the interests of the vast majority of the workers and people, but expressing those interests, they have the ability to guide our path in today’s struggle and in building the future of the Country and building a better life for our people.

A path that will open with the will, the strength and the struggle of the workers and the people and with the reinforcement of this great April force that the PCP is!

We are firmly convinced that the noble April project and its values and achievements will eventually prove to be an objective necessity in the materialisation of a fraternal and progressive Portugal.