Speech by Jerónimo de Sousa, General Secretary, in the rally celebrating the 96th. anniversary of the PCP
March 4, 2017

We are celebrating ninety six years of the life of our Party - the Portuguese Communist Party - in an atmosphere of great confidence, vitality and hope in the future.

Confidence in the struggle of the workers and the people. Confidence in the collective of thousands of communist men, women and youth who renew and reinvigorate their intervention every day with the affiliation of new generations who proudly stand up to our past and the unique history of our Party.
Confidence in our own strengths which also result from our firm convictions that give meaning and a path of hope to the struggle and life of the workers and the people, as was evident in the XX Congress that the PCP has just held.

A Congress that was a great success in terms of involvement, participation and answer to the great national problems and a remarkable moment of affirmation of the PCP, of its unity, cohesion and combativeness.

A Congress that confirmed and reaffirmed its identity as a Party of the working class and of all workers. It confirmed and reaffirmed its Programme of an advanced democracy with the values of April in the future of Portugal. It confirmed and reaffirmed our supreme goal - the building of a society free from exploitation, socialism and communism.

The Congress of a Party that affirms itself as the force that is a bearer of the necessary policy for a developed and sovereign Portugal, as the force that assumes its commitment to the workers and the people and drives their struggle, along with all democrats and patriots, so as to enable a break with the exploitation, impoverishment, decline and dependence, and to ensure a sovereign Portugal with a future.

The XX Congress pointed out the need for an intense action, articulating and taking advantage of the materialization of all the possibilities of furthering the defence, restoration and achievement of rights, with the essential objective of materializing a patriotic and left wing alternative.
This necessary and indispensable alternative, a matter of utmost topicality, that we are striving to build, which is inseparable from the reinforcement and broadening the struggle of the workers and the people, of strengthening the unitary organisations of the masses, of convergence of democrats and patriots, and of the reinforcement of the PCP.

A Congress that is fostering a strong and diversified action that we need to expand with the reinforcement of the Party's intervention in order to valorise and affirm this necessary and indispensable policy, like the campaign we have launched and is underway with the slogan "Production , employment, sovereignty. Free Portugal from submission to the Euro”. A campaign which, by promoting a broad debate on national production and its increase, as a condition of economic independence and promotion of jobs, will underline the importance of the country's liberation from submission to the Euro,
associated with the renegotiation of the debt and the recovery of public control of banking to overcome external constraints, to restore monetary and budgetary sovereignty, to free resources for public investment, to improve public services, and to improve and strengthen the social functions of the State.
But also, and among other initiatives, this national action "More rights, more future. No to precariousness” aiming at the fair principle that a permanent job has to imply a permanent employment contract.

A campaign based on the valorisation of work and workers - an essential pillar of a patriotic and left-wing policy - with the continuation of the action to increase the national minimum wage to 600 euros and the widespread increase of wages, against deregulation and for a reduction of working hours, the defence of rights, the defence and affirmation of collective bargaining, and the amendment of the Labour Code and labour legislation of Public Administration workers with the repeal of the grievous rules.

We are commemorating and celebrating the 96th. anniversary of the PCP, with our eyes on the work that lies ahead, determined to honour our commitments to do everything to reverse the offensive of these past years of policies of exploitation and impoverishment and preparing new battles that we want to mean new achievements for our people and new and more determined steps for the sovereign development of the Country.
Here we are, sure of our path, inspired by the work carried out in defence of the workers, the farmers, the intellectuals, the technical and scientific cadres, the micro, small and medium-size entrepreneurs, of women and youth, of the pensioners, the disabled, ready and determined to continue the struggle at the service of the workers and our people.

We commemorate today, in this atmosphere of celebration, joy and confidence, 96 years of a party that is proud of its past of antifascist struggle and resistance, its unparalleled contribution to the conquest of freedom and the foundation and construction of the democratic regime born of the April Revolution and, to this day, of resistance against the policy of capitalist recovery and monopoly restoration.

We commemorate today the 96th. anniversary of the life of a Party with an irreplaceable role to uphold the interests of the workers and the Country, in the fight against the right-wing policy and decisive, as life has once again shown, with its coherent intervention not only in the consistent demand for the immediate stop of the PSD/CDS governance, but also for the important contribution that the communist militants gave in driving the struggle that created the conditions that led to their social and electoral isolation and to their defeat.

We commemorate this Portuguese Communist Party which was born in a unique way in the European and international context of those early years of the twentieth century. It was born out of the exclusive will and decision of the Portuguese working class and workers and as a corollary of their struggle and to materialize an autonomous intervention of the working class as a historical subject of social change and to build a new society liberated from the exploitation of man by another man.

Born and honoured in the course of its life in these founding goals, maintaining and defending its distinctive feature, its identity, firm in its ideal, which does not abandon its principles, which bases its intervention and action in its ideology - Marxism-Leninism - always enriched by experience and life.
A Party built brick by brick based on the Portuguese reality and the Portuguese revolutionary experience, but critically assimilating the world revolutionary experience.

A Party that is the result of the sacrifice and selflessness of its fallen heroes in the struggle, of the comrades who for decades faced repression and on the many thousands who, with intense and dedicated militancy, brought it to us with the vitality and strength it holds. To all of them our tribute!
But if this Party is the exclusive creation of the working class and of the Portuguese workers, this creation, this birth is inseparable from the galvanizing impulse of the October Socialist Revolution, whose centennial we will celebrate with a diversified program of initiatives throughout this year, because if there is a feature that marks the identity of our Party, it is undoubtedly the fact that we are a patriotic and simultaneously an internationalist Party.
We will commemorate this great and most striking milestone in the struggle of exploited and oppressed generations, reaffirming the validity of the communist ideal and project.

We will celebrate the October Revolution with its inaugural character of a new historical era - the time of transition from capitalism to socialism. The first triumphant socialist revolution, the result of the conscious action of the Russian proletariat and its Party - the Bolshevik Party, Lenin's party.
The first experience of building a type of society never before known to mankind, which began an extraordinary process of social change, where millions of human beings once excluded and deprived from any political and social intervention became protagonists and builders of their own future.
We celebrate the October Revolution for launching profound transformations on a planetary level, changing the face of the world, its achievements, conquests and transformations in favour of workers and peoples and by celebrating it we are affirming that another world is possible!

Commemorations that assume a renewed significance in the present time, when workers and peoples are confronted with the absence of this reality that emerged from the Revolution - the Soviet Union - and see dramatically how much more unjust and dangerous and less peaceful the world is today., but also since this absence has meant the worsening of the perversions of the capitalist system and the enhancement of its exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and predatory nature.
An unquestionable reality that the detractors of history, the ideologues of the bourgeoisie, the imperialist propaganda mystify with the famous theses of the "end of history" and the "death of communism" in an attempt to eternalize capitalism and to prevent workers and peoples from understanding and being aware that there is an alternative to capitalism - socialism.

But these gravediggers of communism, of the struggle and of history are wrong!

To those who insist on this spent and crude discourse that the end of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the first experiences of building socialism mean the end of the communist ideal, we say: look around! Look and see if you will! Look at the struggle that the workers and peoples of the world courageously undertake. See if, in fact, capitalism, instead of being the protagonist, as they claimed, of a proclaimed triumphal march on the road to universal democracy, in a world freed from wars and crises, is not, after all, throwing Humanity into an unsustainable situation!

Just look around without prejudice to see that this is it: in one of its deepest crises - a profound structural crisis - capitalism has nothing to offer to the peoples except the worsening of exploitation, unemployment, precariousness, more injustice and social inequalities, attacks on social and labour rights, denial of democratic freedoms and rights, usurpation and destruction of resources, interference and aggression against national sovereignty, militarism and war.

We live in times that are increasingly fraught with dangers and uncertainties, with real historical and civilizational setbacks.
The evolution of the international situation involving the major capitalist powers is a matter of serious concern for what it entails in terms of increasing risks for workers and peoples.

The coming into power of the new Administration of the United States of America and its implications, still unpredictable, in a wide range of fields, the positioning of big business and of the European Union in view of the disengagement process of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the continuing economic and financial crisis, the expansion of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, destabilization and war operations in various parts of the world, the growing deepening of inter-imperialist rivalries, are among other factors that reveal an unstable and disturbing international situation, increasingly marked by a violent offensive by imperialism.

Instability and concerns that have been growing with the inauguration of the new President of the United States of America and his Administration.
And if the feelings of indignation against Trump's policies and his xenophobic and inhuman measures are just, we cannot but draw attention to the political and ideological diversions that emanate from various imperialist centres characterized by great hypocrisy and manipulation.

Like the cases of the US "protectionism" campaign and the "annoyance" of several European Union officials over its measures regarding refugees and migrants - the same officials who in the European Union are carrying out policies similar to those now adopted in the United States of America.
Campaigns aimed at whitewashing the role of the Obama Administration and safeguarding its policy, attacking all those who take up the defence of sovereignty and the right to economic and social development as one of the central axes of resistance to capitalist globalization, but also opening the door to a greater and faster affirmation of the European Union as an imperialist pole, enhancing its militarization.

This aim of the European Union is quite clear in its latest developments and in the ideological campaign which is underway on the 60th. anniversary of the Treaty of Rome and in the preparation of its forthcoming Summits which, by instrumentalizing various "external dangers", has the clear objective not only of maintaining the pillars and policies of the European Union, but of preparing new leaps forward of a federalist nature, of maintaining and deepening its instruments of domination - notably the Euro and the Single Market - and accelerating the militarist and interventionist component of the European Union.
It is a dangerous delusion to think that national interests are defended in the framework of the strengthening of the European Union. Strengthening the European Union and the Euro will not bring a solidarity that never existed.

Our country has paid dearly, with economic stagnation, regression in its development, setback in the living conditions of workers and people, their income, labour and social rights, unemployment, emigration, poverty and social inequalities, years of right-wing policies and of submission to the impositions of the European Union and of the Euro to which it has been subject.

It paid bitterly and more intensely the policies of intensification of exploitation and impoverishment, imposed by the PSD/CDS government, under the Pact of Aggression, concluded between the institutions of the European Union, the IMF and the right-wing parties that have governed the country in recent decades.
Portugal has been dragged into a situation that jeopardizes its future. The continued weakening of productive activity, disinvestment in essential areas, destruction and handing of strategic companies, favouring financial speculation and private banking, external subservience - are the hallmarks and options of a disastrous process with consequences and lasting effects that must be faced and overcome.

In this new phase of national political life, measures were taken to restore incomes and rights and with an impact on the economy, which curbed the path of decline and intensification of exploitation and impoverishment imposed by the previous PSD/CDS government.

But this fact does not elude what remains to be done, the many limitations that need to be surpassed, whether to respond to the aspirations and rights, or to overcome the serious structural problems that the country faces, and that have accumulated as a result of decades of right-wing policies and of conditioning and of external impositions.

The steps taken in this new phase cannot conceal the country's vulnerability to external factors, particularly when it is deprived of monetary sovereignty and totally dependent on the ECB's options or on the blackmail of the financial rating agencies.

The steps that have been taken cannot conceal the persistence of serious economic and social problems in the current national situation, which require a further level of political response, which is not possible in the present context of external constraints and conditionings. High unemployment, precariousness, low wages persist. Concerns remain about the real situation in banking, namely the continuation of the banking concentration process and its transfer to foreign capital. There remains a worrying situation in public services, in sectors of the National Health Service, in public transport, in the postal service, among others. There remains a problem of economic growth that falls short of the needs. Threats persist over public debt interest rates. There remains a low level of investment with serious repercussions on the development of the country and an aggravated framework of systematic pressure and demand from the European Union for greater 'fiscal consolidation'.

Threats, pressures and demands that reveal the impossibility of defending Portugal's interests without facing the issue of the debt and submission to the Euro, of external rules and impositions and the agenda of impoverishment and decline that the centres of capital want to impose on Portugal.
They speak repeatedly of the deficit as if this were the great national problem and trivialise the central problems of the country - the unsustainable debt that prevents investment, consumes national resources and wealth and the insufficient economic growth that is increasingly incompatible with a policy of obsession with the deficit.

In fact, economic growth and the growth of employment could be different if the policy of reducing the deficit at all costs, following external impositions and even going beyond them, did not imply the sharp reduction in investment as we have long seen and would still be more substantial by freeing resources that the renegotiation of public debt renegotiation would enable.

As the PCP has insisted, what the country needs is a patriotic and left-wing policy. A policy in rupture with the formulas and paths that sank the country and with a vision and objectives contrary to those that led Portugal to decline and impoverishment. A policy that frees the country from the constraints that stifle it and block its development.

A policy of defence and promotion of national production and productive sectors, with the development of a policy in defence of the manufacturing and extractive industries, of agriculture and fisheries, which places national resources at the service of the people and the country and reduces the structural deficits.
A policy of valorisation of work and of workers, based on the increase of wages and pensions, with full employment, in the defence of work with rights.
A policy of recovery for the public sector of the basic strategic sectors of the economy and strong support to micro, small and medium-size enterprises.
A policy that places public administration and services at the service of the people and the country, valorising the National Health Service as a broad, universal and free service; a free and quality Public School; a public and universal Social Security system.
A policy of fiscal justice that relieves the tax burden on the incomes of the workers and the people and stops the scandalous favouring of big business.
A policy of defence of the democratic regime and compliance with the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, deepening of rights, freedoms and guarantees, fights corruption and delivers an independent justice that is accessible to all.

By the way, behold this scandal of transfer of another ten thousand million euros to tax havens between 2011 and 2014, without control by those who imposed the highest ever tax increase in democracy on workers and people, created VIP lists, and turned a blind eye to the financial movements of big business.

Looking at the evolution of the national situation, in this new phase of political life, despite the set of contradictions arising from the resulting political framework, we cannot fail to see and valorise the advances and achievements made. Advances and achievements that are inseparable from the contribution and initiative of the PCP and the action and struggle of the workers.

Advances and achievements that only became possible in a correlation of forces in which the PS does not have a majority government. Advances that go beyond what the PS Programme admitted.
Let us be clear: with a different result in the elections and if PS could form a majority government, or a different correlation of forces in the Assembly of the Republic and, let there be no doubt, that many of the advances achieved would not have been implemented. They were because there is struggle. They were because the PCP and the PEV with their weight have conditioned the political options. In fact, nothing that was achieved would have been possible in a different framework and without the contribution and initiative of the PCP.

To be aware of this is to understand that to go further, overcoming the obvious contradictions of the current political options of the party in government, it is necessary, besides the broadening of the struggle, to give more power to the PCP.

This is a task that we have to take into our hands, alongside the broad masses, winning them to the correct and just idea that the consolidation of what has been achieved and the new steps that are necessary need a stronger PCP and with also more weight at the institutional level.

This is quite clear in the resistance we see on the part of the PS government and in the political choices it has made, without demeaning all the positive measures taken, especially when it precludes changes to the Labour Code and labour legislation of Public Administration, repealing norms imposed by the previous government and damaging to the rights of the workers. It resists not eliminating the expiry of collective bargaining, assumption of the principle of more favourable treatment. When it is accepted as a good solution, for example, the renewal of PPP in healthcare or the option of handing, right now or in the future, of the Novo Banco to big business or still, to give other examples, the strategy of extension of foundations to new institutions of higher education, not to mention the positions of defence of the deepening of the European Union.

It is not by chance that PSD, CDS and the sectors connected to the revanchist policy of exploitation and impoverishment make the PCP their main enemy and the main target of their vicious attacks. It is not by chance that some even say that it is necessary to weaken the PCP, because this is the condition to restore their lost power.
It is in keeping with this contradictory process that we will continue our struggle determined to meet the aspirations of the workers and the people, disregarding pressures, rejecting any attempts to condition our free intervention.
The PCP will not yield to right-wing policies, as it will not contribute to the upsurge of feelings of apathy and conformism that limit the irreplaceable role of the struggle of the workers and the people.
That is why, stressing this need to ensure a stronger PCP for further progress in solving national problems and improving the people's living conditions, we reaffirm at the same time that the struggle and its development is another indispensable condition for such advances .
Firmly convinced of its importance and need we salute from here the struggle of the workers and of the populations that have been taking place all over the country

From here we salute the ongoing struggles and call for the involvement of Party militants in their preparation and implementation.

We call for their involvement in the development of the struggle for demands in workplaces, companies and sectors.

We call for their involvement in the preparation and implementation of that which we wish, and are sure, will be a great national demonstration of women that the MDM has called for on March 11 in Lisbon, as well as other actions to commemorate International Women's Day.

Allow me at this moment to salute the generations of communist women who throughout the 96 years of the PCP gave the best of their lives, their militancy to the intervention of the party collective and the struggle of women in defence of their rights and their social emancipation.

We also call for the involvement in the commemorations of March 24, Student Day and March 28, national youth day, in which the national demonstration of working youth against precariousness called by CGTP-IN/Interjovem stands out, in the popular celebrations of the anniversary of the April Revolution, and particularly for the involvement in the celebrations of May 1st, with a mobilization based on a claiming action for concrete objectives in every company and sector, affirming this day as a great day of struggle of Portuguese workers !

It was the struggle that brought us here, it will be the struggle that will take us to a future of new achievements!

The XX Congress has defined as a great battle and a fundamental question the need to strengthen our Party, its organisation and intervention, in connection with the political initiative.

This moment of celebration of 96 years of life and struggle is also the right moment to valorise all that we have accomplished in recent times and to show how much we have to do to raise the level of intervention of our Party, the vital need for strengthening its organisation and of its connection to the workers and the people, to their needs and aspirations.

We are and have been the necessary and irreplaceable force to uphold the interests of the workers, the people and the country and to build the patriotic and left-wing alternative.

The force with a vanguard role in the struggle of the workers, and anti-monopoly layers and classes and with an unparalleled intervention to foster the struggle in the defence, restoration and achievement of the rights of the workers and the people.

We have an intervention that distinguishes itself and makes a difference in all the institutions in which we are present. In the European Parliament in the defence of national interests and cooperation between peoples. In the Assembly of the Republic with an intense intervention combating what is negative and taking the initiative in improving the living conditions of the people. In the Local Administration pursuing the intervention and remarkable work of CDU.
We have a unique intervention in the great political combats on the development and the sovereignty of the Country.
We have also made a huge effort to organise and structure our work on many different fronts.
We have taken significant steps in the materialization of the national contact action with Party members to raise the militancy, update data and hand the Party membership card.
We have successfully concluded the national campaign to purchase the Quinta do Cabo and expand the grounds of the Avante! Festival.
We have advanced in the enlargement of the Party, which has been meant, as announced at the XX Congress, a new Party membership of 5,300 militants in the last four years and in the accountability and assumption of responsibilities by more cadres.
The positive steps that have been taken in strengthening the organisation are a stimulus to continue our work.
We are a great Party, but we need it to be stronger and for that, given the situation and the demands that are posed, we need to pay close attention to the fundamental guidelines that the XX Congress has set down to strengthen the Party.
Strengthening that means continuing to improve leadership capacity and overall accountability of the cadres.
It is necessary to continue working to broaden the understanding that militancy, the participation of every militant, is the decisive factor of the Party's strength.
Strengthening that needs to continue the development of the Party's work in companies and workplaces, with the creation of new cells, the strengthening of existing ones, their structure, functioning and intervention, and the adoption of measures of the cadres necessary to achieve these advances.
Continuing the work of recruiting and integrating the new militants - an organism, a task - and the fostering of the political and ideological education.
Strengthening the functioning of grassroots organisations to respond to the problems of the workers and populations and encouraging mass action by integrating contacts to form lists of CDU candidates and supporters for local elections.
Working with specific strata and sectors, defining objectives and measures among the pensioners, micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized farmers, intellectuals and the cultural sector.
Strengthening of the work with the youth and support to the JCP and its Congress to be held on April 1st and 2nd in Setúbal, the youth and JCP that we salute from here.

Carrying out the campaign to disseminate the Avante!, an important priority in the current situation in view of the silencing, manipulation and lying that is launched against the Party and its project.

But strengthening the Party also means ensuring its financial independence, with the regular payment of dues, analyse the structure of those responsible for collecting dues and its enlargement to cover all the militants, updating the value of dues having as reference 1% of the monthly income, the promotion of campaigns of funds, as well as following the principle that those elected are not benefited or harmed in the exercise of their functions and the principle regarding polling station allowances.

Alongside this decisive organisational work, a major political battle is underway - the local administration elections which, in the framework of the Party's general action, are now a priority.

CDU will appear in the whole country with its alternative project and the distinctive character of its local administration action. Proving the values of Work, Honesty and Competence that it assumes, of the dimension of the work carried out and of an intervention in defence of the interests of the populations and workers, of the recognized rigour in the management of local administration and in the posture of its elected representatives, of the intervention in defence of public services and affirmation of Democratic Local Administration.
In the new phase of national political life the distinctive affirmation of the CDU project, the differentiating nature of its proposals and options, the clear and assumed alternative to the management and projects of other political forces, whether PSD and CDS, or PS or BE, assume great importance.

This is yet another demanding battle. Demanding due to the indispensable involvement and mobilisation that our organisations face, for the vast task of setting up hundreds of candidacies, for the necessary affirmation of CDU as a broad space of democratic participation and for the need for its dynamization and unitary enlargement. Demanding because this is also a moment of accountability of the work carried out, the drafting of programmes and electoral commitments, a widespread affirmation of CDU as the great force of the left in local administration, necessary and indispensable in national political life.

The forthcoming local elections are a political battle of great importance for what they represent at the local level, but also for what they can contribute to strengthening the struggle we wage in this new phase of national political life to better defend the interests of the workers, the people and the Country, to strengthen the PCP and its decisive role in undertaking the path of defence, restoration and achievement of incomes and rights, and to respond, within the framework of the patriotic and left-wing policies it proposes, to the problems of the workers, the people and the country.

Here we stand with confidence. Here we stand celebrating 96 years of the life of the Party that although being a short time in the life of a people, is time enough to judge the history, the struggle, the ideal and project of a Party.

Here we stand knowing that the tasks that the current situation places on the PCP are great and demanding, but will do everything to achieve them.

This Party necessary and indispensable to build in Portugal a political alternative and a policy at the service of the workers, of the people and the Country.

This Party that almost for a century fought, resisted, advanced and remains firm in its intervention and objectives.

This Party that assumes with conviction and honour its communist identity. The Party to which we, the communist militants, are immensely proud to belong, assuming the legacy left to us by successive generations of communists.

This Party that is here anchored in the conviction of the value and topicality of a Project that pursues the noble ideal of emancipation and liberation of workers and peoples from exploitation, because we want a better life for those who work, because we want a developed Portugal, independent, fairer and more solidary.

This Portuguese Communist Party always determined and combative to fulfil its role in the defence of popular interests, for a patriotic and left-wing policy, for an advanced democracy, for socialism and communism.