Tour de force speech by Paulo Raimundo, General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) at the Opening Session of the XXII Congress of the PCP.
Heartfelt greetings to the delegates who are representing here our party collective. Greetings that we extend to the guests who are here and to all those who are watching via our [online] broadcast.
I would also like to salute our friends from the most diverse institutions and organisations, from various political, social and cultural quadrants, who greatly honour us with their presence.
Please allow me to say special words to all those who ensure the functioning of all the Congress services, in an example of militancy and dedication. We are proud to be able to count with your contribution.
The XXII Congress is a moment of great significance for our Party and of great importance for the workers, the people, the youth and the Country.
A Congress with unique characteristics whose construction process is inseparable from the Party that we are, from our communist identity, from our history, from our links with the workers and the people, from the ideal that we embody and fight for, and from the project of transformation of society that we want to materialise.
Here everyone has, not only the right, but also the duty to make their contribution to collective reflection and the development of guidelines, as we will do during these three days.
Over these months, the Party has been called upon to identify issues, problems and steps to understand and act in the reality we face.
Based on these aspects and on our valuable heritage of assessment and analysis, which is embodied in the Party Programme, in resolutions from previous Congresses, in the assessments and guidelines established by the Central Committee, and in the conclusions of the National Conference, we drew up the draft theses/political resolution that the Central Committee has placed for discussion throughout the Party since the end of September.
It was a laborious and demanding process, but at the same time stimulating and indispensable in guaranteeing what is necessary in a Party like ours – a profound internal democracy.
Despite a shorter preparatory phase, when compared to other Congresses, the Party's efforts and involvement in the collective construction of the XXII Congress should be emphasised.
We held around 900 meetings, involving around 14,000 Party members, plus the participation of many friends with whom we share concerns, want to discuss the present and build the future.
The preparation for the PCP’s Congress was what the workers and the people needed it to be - debate, participation, struggle, project, hope, courage and confidence in the future.
Here we look at life and the evolution of the situation from the point of view of the class interests of the workers and the peoples, of the exploited and oppressed.
Here we do not absorb - on the contrary, we oppose - the interests, ideology and objectives of capital.
Here we assume our patriotic vision and our internationalist duties.
Here we want to transform society, we want to put an end to injustice and inequalities, we want to pave the way for an alternative for the Country, we want Peace, we want democracy, we want the values of April* in the future of Portugal.
Comrades, there is an inescapable aspect that marks reality, an intense ideological struggle which is an expression of the class struggle that is underway in our times.
It is a fact that there has always been an ideological offensive. The big difference today is its scale, the resources and instruments at its service.
The mechanisms of ideological conditioning and control are intensifying on a global scale, anchored in giant economic groups that control the media and digital networks and seek to impose a single thought, concealing the nature of capitalism.
They want to conceal the exploitation of the workers, the oppression of the peoples, the brutality of war and the destruction of natural resources.
They want to stop and hinder the struggle and resistance of the peoples.
They want to hide injustice and those who are responsible for it, as well as to liquidate rights.
They want to legitimise the escalation of militarism, sanctions, bombings, interference, coups and to silence those who fight for Peace.
They want to rewrite history, including the history of the Portuguese Revolution.
They want to promote anti-communism, racism, hatred and reactionary and fascistic ideas, to which they are giving increasingly more space and prominence.
These are times of disinformation, of fake news and lies, of manipulation and censorship promoted on a global scale.
To ignore this offensive would not only be naive, but dangerous for the struggle that we are waging.
It is an offensive that is taking place in a changing world, with fast and worrying developments, where capitalism reveals its exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and predatory nature.
The capitalism that allows the five richest people in the world to have doubled their wealth since 2020 is the same that dooms hundreds of millions of human beings to the most absolute destitution, hunger, preventable disease or lack of drinking water.
A system that exacerbates exploitation, degrades living standards, attacks rights, sovereignty and democracy, and worsens environmental problems.
A system that promotes war, that encourages reactionary, far-right and fascist forces in order to achieve its goals.
The last few years have shown imperialism’s violent offensive, with its escalation of confrontation and war, as we are witnessing in the Middle East, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, in Europe, namely in Ukraine, in Asia-Pacific and other parts of the world.
It is a path of increased militarism, of growing threats to Peace, with the danger of a world conflict that, if not prevented, could take on catastrophic proportions.
A concrete expression of this escalation is NATO itself, with its warmongering action, its successive enlargements and its global intervention.
Now accounting for over half of global military spending, NATO is imperialism’s military arm and its most dangerous instrument in the ongoing offensive.
it is an offensive led by US imperialism, whose aim of imposing the supremacy of US interests will not change with the new Trump administration.
It is an offensive that is joined by the European Union, with its increasingly obvious militaristic path and as the European pillar of NATO.
It is an offensive through which the major capitalist powers, gathered in the G7, are trying to counteract their relative decline and loss of hegemonic dominance, in the face of the developing broad process of rearrangement of forces at world level and the continuation of the struggle of the workers and peoples.
In this process of rearrangement of forces China plays a prominent role, with the participation of other developing countries with growing economic and political weight. They seek to converge, within a very heterogeneous framework, in resisting imperialism’s domination.
The assessment of this process is inseparable from the assessment of the main threat.
In the context of resistance and the accumulation of forces at world level, there are serious dangers, but there is also the potential to develop the struggle.
A struggle that is everywhere and is taking place in the most diverse conditions.
A struggle that demands stronger Communist parties and their cooperation, as well as the convergence of diversified forces in a broad anti-imperialist front, to halt and push back imperialism’s attempts and to pave the way for a new international order capable of ensuring Peace and justice in the relations between peoples.
Reality, time and life are proving us right.
As we have always warned, the arms race and war serve well the profits of the industry of death, but they can lead to the destruction of Humanity.
How many deaths, how much suffering, how much devastation could have been avoided.
How far are those who everyday demand more war, more weapons and more destruction willing to go in order to impose their interests?
Where do they want to drive us?
Stop the war, stop the dying, stop the suffering, stop pushing Humanity into the abyss.
It is necessary to give Peace a chance!
The fight for peace is a fight for democracy and for the future, a fight that summons all democrats.
They want to silence the voice and strength of Peace, but they will not succeed.
We are here and we will be here to denounce all those who are responsible for, and are complicit with, this escalation, which for some knows no bounds.
We are and we will be here to say that the future of our youth is not, and will not be, to become cannon fodder wherever NATO decides.
We are committed to the struggle for Peace, and we will not remain silent in the face of the genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel and its accomplices.
Here from our Congress, we reaffirm that Palestine is not alone, that Palestine will win.
We will not remain silent, and we salute the workers and peoples around the world who are resisting and fighting for their sovereignty and rights, who are achieving important changes and advances, who are increasingly questioning the imperialist order.
An embrace of solidarity with Cuba, the Cuban people and their revolution; with the Bolivarian Venezuela and the Venezuelan people; with Western Sahara and the Saharawi people. These are examples, among many others, of heroic resistance in our fight for a fairer and better world.
Contrary to what some would like, history has not ended and capitalism is not the end of history.
In this first quarter of the 21st century, the workers and the peoples resist, they intervene to assert their rights, achieve victories, and carry dreams and aspirations that can wait no longer.
It is true that the world is more dangerous, unstable, unfair and unequal. But it is no less true that, as is revealed every day, the struggle continues and that building a new society free from all forms of exploitation and oppression is a necessity that is in the hands of the people to fulfil.
This is the march of History, pushed forward by the workers' struggle, along different paths. With advances and setbacks, but in a general sense of emancipation that places the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism by socialism as a requirement for today and for the future.
Portugal is no stranger to the world around it.
Half a century after the April Revolution, the Country in which we live and act is marked by the deepening of right-wing policies and the process of capitalist integration in the European Union.
We are called upon to act in a more demanding framework, with a more unfavourable balance of forces and a brutal offensive against the Party.
Reactionary ideas and practices are growing and are being promoted, fuelled by the anti-popular policies of the PSD/CDS government, just as they were during the absolute majority of the PS.
We are facing the consequences of a country governed by the power of economic groups and multinationals that dominate and control the main strategic sectors - banks, energy, communications, large-scale retail and industry.
These economic groups play a growing role in the political life and economic path of the Country and find in political power, which is captured and at their service, an instrument for materialising their goals.
This, in open confrontation with the Constitution, in a clear strategy of reconstituting and reorganising monopoly capitalism and reconfiguring the State according to its interests.
Today, Portugal is a country in which successive governments have as their strategic guideline surrendering the Country's sovereignty and submitting to the impositions of the European Union and to foreign interests.
This European Union, which is increasingly an instrument and space for domination by the monopolies, is determined by the major European capitalist powers, which are themselves aligned with, and subordinate to, the strategy of the US and NATO.
If there were any doubts, we are seeing the promotion of increased military spending and of the arms industry at the expense of Peace, of the rights and living standards of the workers and the peoples.
An insatiable and inhumane militarism has already led the current secretary general of NATO to dare to propose cutting healthcare and pension budgets in order to spend more on weapons and war.
This European Union, presented as a beacon of Western virtues, is marked by social regression, with more than 95 million people at risk of poverty.
A European Union that dropped its mask during the troika period, which the Portuguese people has not forgotten; which is complicit with the genocide in Palestine; which is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Mediterranean; which is an advocate of war and of NATO, and a stage for the growth of the far right.
A European Union whose guidelines and directives are being pushed forward in Portugal by the convergence of political forces, from the right to social democracy, with the consequences that are plain to see, starting with the loss of sovereignty.
Life is confirming that, confronted with the surrender and complicity of others, it is in the PCP that lies the strength and determination to fight against projects that spread inequalities and injustice and that subordinate the Country to interests that are not its own.
The marks of the right-wing policy are reflected in the difficulties in workers' lives, with increased exploitation based on the attack against labour rights, on precariousness and the subsistence of low wages.
Difficulties also for hundreds of thousands of pensioners faced with low and devalued pensions, in most cases after a whole lifetime of work.
Difficulties that are reflected on the youth, who cannot find conditions to work and live in this Country.
Difficulties faced by the majority, in contrast with the scandalous profits of the economic groups and the growing weight of foreign capital.
The economy is hijacked by these big interests. It is based on an economic model that despises national production and favours activities with low added value, with easy and immediate profits.
It is a model that heightens inequality in the distribution of wealth, devalues and degrades public services, promotes privatisations and the liberalisation of sectors, favours funds and real estate speculation, denying access to housing, and transfers to the people the burden of the ongoing class policy.
It is a class policy pursued by PS, particularly during its two years of absolute majority, and stepped up by the PSD and CDS government now in place, which is acting in harmony with the projects of the most reactionary forces, Chega and IL.
These forces, although different among themselves, are united in what is essential to the interests of big capital.
The first few months of this government have confirmed the deepening right-wing policy.
The State Budget is yet another feature in the fulfilment of these objectives, following a government programme in which new attempts to attack workers' rights have already been identified.
It is a Budget that impoverishes the lives of the poor and makes the rich even richer.
It reduces corporate income tax (IRC) by one percentage point, guaranteeing an extra 400 million [euros] a year that go straight to the economic groups, which already make 32 million euros a day in profits.
Comrades, it is no surprise that PSD and CDS, with Chega and IL, are fully embracing the interests of those who think they own all this.
And while it is not a surprise, we cannot help but note the complicit choice by PS which, no matter how great the proclamations of opposition or the ‘violent abstentions’, cannot be disguised.
PSD and CDS had the Budget adopted. PS gave them the conditions for this, freeing Chega and IL from having to vote in favour.
They are all, notwithstanding fabricated disagreements, complicit in the path that is being taken.
And in the face of this web of complicity, the PCP is the true force of opposition, resistance and alternative to right-wing policies.
A path that requires fighting against the advance of reactionary conceptions, objectives and forces that, presented as anti-system, are the worst that is produced by the system.
A fight that, in order to be consistent, requires breaking with right-wing policies, which are the root cause that makes room for, boosts and feeds these very same forces.
You do not fight reactionary forces by fuelling their conceptions and applying, under the pretext of fighting them, the policies that make them grow.
The Country's development in the near future will depend on the outcome of the confrontation between those who aim to complete the counter-revolutionary process and the forces that, anchored in April and the Constitution, resist them.
A fight and a clash that cannot allow us to stand on the fence.
[It is not possible] to talk about the left and support right-wing policies.
[It is not possible] to talk about workers' rights and promote more benefits for big capital.
[It is not possible] to talk about the superior national interest and then hand over yet another company to foreigners, yet another piece of our sovereignty.
The national situation calls for a political initiative with clear aims and goals and, without hesitation, to decisively combat right-wing policies.
The threats from the right demand, and will demand even more in the future, a stronger and more influential PCP. There are now a growing number of people, even from other political quadrants, who identify and recognise in the PCP, along with the validity and relevance of its project, the coherence, determination and courage to face threats. We are a Party that does not surrender in the face of difficulties and that has confidence in the possibility of breaking with this course.
In these difficult times, the Party is called upon to assume its responsibilities before the people and the Country and to point out solutions and ways to open up a different course in national life.
These are times of resistance, but resistance that does not stand idle, that does not shy from gathering forces to create conditions to move forward and transform.
In these times, the defence of the democratic regime enshrined in the Constitution demands at the same time the mobilisation of the workers and the people for their interests and living conditions, their mobilisation for a break with the right-wing policy at the service of big capital and confidence and mobilisation in building the patriotic and left-wing alternative.
What the seriousness of the situation demands is a clear assertion of the PCP and of its role, and not its dilution in false paths and inconsequential solutions.
It is in the PCP's courage that lies the greatest guarantee of the struggle against reactionary forces.
The PCP is the most consistent and decisive force in the fight to break with right-wing policies, the most solid barrier in the defence of the democratic regime and in the demand for compliance with the Constitution, factors which are in themselves inseparable from the fight for a developed, progressive and sovereign Portugal.
Five issues arise that are particularly important for this objective:
- Strengthening the PCP, as a decisive condition.
- Strengthening the mass struggle and broadening the social front of struggle which, starting from the struggle of the working class and the workers, may encompass and mobilise other anti-monopoly strata affected by the right-wing policy.
- Expanding the convergence of all democrats and patriots in the struggle to break with right-wing policies and to materialise the alternative that will help to broaden the political base paving the way for a Portugal with a future.
- Asserting the defence of national sovereignty and rejecting submission and subordination to the interests of foreign powers, in a clear rejection of war and in defence of Peace.
- A broader convergence to defeat reactionary projects and to defend the democratic regime enshrined in the Constitution, implementing the rights which it enshrines.
This course has in all those who stand for defending the democratic regime and materialising the Constitution, an aggregating element capable of mobilising forces and energy to resist and win.
This is the challenge that we face.
Valorising labour and workers.
Ensuring a Public Administration and public services to serve the people.
Promoting general economic development.
Ensuring a cohesive and balanced Country and the conservation of nature.
Strengthening democracy, recovering instruments of sovereignty and asserting national independence.
Promoting international co-operation and Peace.
The fundamental axes of what we propose, aligned with the Constitution of the Republic, are goals of the workers, respond to the problems of our people, and are in themselves elements of hope for the youth which open up the necessary path for the Country.
Its content, project and proposals are deeply linked to the needs of those who live and work in Portugal, this Country that we will not give up on, this Country that has a future.
The difficulty does not lie in identifying the content of the alternative. The challenge lies in understanding how to build it, who we can count on and in having confidence in the real possibility of materialising it.
There is no trick or magic solution that can lead us to the patriotic and left-wing alternative.
We must resist, trust the workers and the people, know the ground that we stand on and have confidence in the just reasons of our struggle.
We have to take the initiative and fight, fight even harder and with more people, strengthen the organisations of the workers and of the popular masses, increase their participation, broaden the convergence of democrats and patriots, strengthen the PCP.
This is a path of a demanding, articulated and dialectical process. It is not just around the corner and requires daily, patient and bold intervention.
It is an alternative that is built in the struggle, with every contact, information and mobilisation.
Every struggle raises awareness, reveals possibilities and takes steps towards the alternative.
This is the struggle that we value. Based on concrete demands, it embodies broader objectives. This struggle seeks class unity and fights any attempts to divide it. This struggle confronts the more immediate goals of big capital, as expressed in wages, healthcare, education and housing.
This is the struggle that exists and is intensifying, confirming the roots, influence, capacity for intervention, action, mobilisation and struggle of the broad-based trade union movement and of CGTP-IN, the great workers' trade union central that we salute from here.
This struggle begins in the companies and workplaces, with the strong involvement and participation of workers, in strikes, stoppages, plenary sessions, concentrations, petitions, marches and demonstrations. It has had important moments of sectoral and general convergence, prominent among them the May 1st struggles.
This struggle has confronted, with determination, the right-wing policies and the bosses' offensive, in the struggle for pay rises, for the valorisation of careers and professions, for permanent contracts, for a reduction in working hours and against their deregulation, for the elimination of abusive shift work, against precariousness and to defend rights, including the free exercise of trade union action and organisation. This struggle has achieved important results in many cases.
This is a struggle of the working class and workers that is taking place every day, which has counted on the commitment and contribution of communists, and which is the great driving force behind the broader process of resistance. It is a constant example that encourages and gives confidence to the struggle of other classes, strata and social groups.
These struggles extend to many other sectors. Of youth and students for free, quality Public Education, for the right to Culture and Sport, for the right to work with rights, for the right to housing and emancipation. To the struggle of pensioners and the elderly for higher pensions and dignity. Of women against inequality and discrimination, in work and in life.
To the struggle of the communities in defence of the National Health Service, of Public Education, of transports, of the postal service and access to justice. Of artists, Culture workers and professionals for the right to cultural creation and fruition. Of researchers, grant holders and scientists, for investment and the right to work with rights.
To the struggle for housing and against speculation.
To the struggle of small producers, small and medium farmers and common land sharers, fishermen and small shipowners, demanding conditions to carry out their activity, against the seizure of huge margins by large-scale retail.
To the struggle of micro, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to reduce overhead costs.
To the struggle of immigrants for decent working conditions, for the implementation of rights without discrimination.
To the struggle of emigrants, for the implementation of rights and assistance in the countries where they live and for their right to return to their Country.
To the struggle of people with disabilities, for respect, dignity and living conditions.
To the struggle of the people for the achievements and project of April, for Peace, against fascism and war, in defence of the environment, against racism and xenophobia and all forms of violence, against oppression, prejudice and discrimination, the struggle for a fair life, for a better life to which they are entitled.
This is a struggle that reveals the need to strengthen the organisation of the workers and the popular masses, CGTP-IN, the unions of the united trade union movement, workers’ councils, users’ committees, local communities, the associations and the very diverse spaces where life pulses and perspectives open up to defend and further interests and rights, freedom and democracy, social progress.
In the current situation, strengthening these organisations and movements is even more urgent and demanding.
Breaking with right-wing policies and building a political alternative is not just a question of identifying political forces that can commit to these goals.
All the forces that want to boost the patriotic and left-wing alternative are welcome and necessary to the process. But what determines and will determine its materialisation is the social force and movement that can push the political forces, that can change the current balance of forces, that can drive forward and sustain these goals of the youth, the workers and the people.
In fact, it is with them that the alternative is built. It is with the participation and mobilisation of all those who are interested in it.
It is with the expansion and convergence of democrats and patriots, winning them over to an alternative that is also theirs, on the basis of a political programme that breaks with right-wing policies, that starts from the rights and project of the Constitution of the Republic, congregating forces and energies.
This construction requires the involvement of broad sectors, respecting the diversity of points of view and stands, united in this common goal.
The patriotic and left-wing alternative is the great battle to which we are all called.
No matter how long it takes, we reaffirm here that the PCP will commit all its forces to halt the right-wing policy and implement the rights and living conditions that have been denied to the Portuguese workers and people.
The context is indeed very demanding. But we act with confidence in the justness of our project, with confidence in the masses and in our people - in the people who, in the popular celebrations of the 50th anniversary of 25th of April, took to the streets in an enthusiastic way, transforming streets and squares into avenues of freedom, the people who clearly stated: the 25th April forever.
In our struggle, we combine confidence with joy.
The joy of those who know that they are right and that nothing can be more exhilarating than fighting for what is right.
We need to strengthen the PCP.
This Party, whose identity, intervention, courage and project constitute the organised force, the vanguard force, at the service of the workers, the people, the youth and the Country.
This Party that takes the initiative every day, that they seek to erase from television, but which they cannot erase from the concrete life of the country.
This Party which is indispensable and irreplaceable for the change that the Country needs.
They can draw any scenario, invent any front and make any proclamation. But without the PCP’s clarity, coherence, courage and project, the better life that those who live and work here rightly yearn for, will not become a reality.
This is the Party that the workers, the people and the youth can count on and will always count on, whatever the circumstances.
Just as they have in this period that separates us from the XXI Congress, in which the Party's intervention and the struggle of the workers and the people stood up to the offensive, resisted and succeeded in winning rights, and have been the staunchest opposition to the policy of serving big capital and of submission to the European Union.
During this period, we carried out important events, the celebrations of the PCP's Centenary, a remarkable programme asserting the Party, its identity and project under the slogan “Freedom, democracy and socialism - the future has a party”.
Within the framework of CDU, we have faced eight elections, in a very demanding context, under constant belittling and prejudice, with results that fall short of the needs of the workers and the people.
From here we salute our allies and comrades-in-arms from the PEV and ID, in the certainty that we will continue to make the CDU what it is: the great space for convergence and alternative, the force of work, honesty and competence, from the outset at the Local Government level.
We made progress in strengthening our organisation in companies and workplaces.
We've carried out a recruitment campaign, several fundraising campaigns and a campaign to disseminate Avante!
We have had a still ongoing programme of commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the April Revolution.
We promoted a wide-ranging activity on the problems of the workers, the people and the country, such as national actions on workers' rights, including the one held with the slogan “More strength to the workers”; the general action “Living better in our land”; the roadmap on national production; the National Meetings on Culture, Housing and Civil Protection; national actions on housing, healthcare, the rights of children and parents.
We fought against war and committed ourselves to the struggle for Peace and internationalist solidarity, namely with the Palestinian people.
Every year we organised the country's biggest political and cultural event, the Avante! Festival, whose next edition is already being prepared.
We organised the National Conference “Taking the initiative, strengthening the Party, responding to the new demands”.
In a context of a major and prolonged offensive, the Party has assumed its responsibilities at the national and international level.
And only this Party, a great Party, deeply connected to the workers, to the people, to life, acting in the reality that it wants to transform, with political, ideological and intervention courage, with strong militancy, could resist the scale of the anti-communist offensive that has, since the last Congress, continued and intensified against it.
This was so because we looked at society from the perspective of the workers’ class interests , seeking their unity and the defence of their interests and rights.
That is how it was and that is how it will be, because we have not given up on the Country, because we have not given up on defending the workers, the people and the youth, because we have stood up to right-wing policies, regardless of who implements them and whatever forms it takes.
It was so because, when they wanted us to be isolated and closed off, we did what we have always done in our 103-year long history of struggle: whenever the dangers are greater, the greater is the need for the Party to reach out to the masses.
However much big capital and the political forces at its service dislike it, and they do dislike it, the PCP is here, anchored in its nature, in the experience of struggle accumulated over more than one century and in its deep connection to the reality of the country.
Here is the Portuguese Communist Party, knowing the soil that it treads, aware of the difficulties, looking for ways to overcome its own shortcomings, but always connected to life, continuing to drive the struggle for the revolutionary transformations that the workers, the people and the Country need.
This was the case when, in September, we launched the National Action that we have underway at the moment: “Raise wages and pensions. For a better life!”.
It has been great process of agitation, contact, conversation and mobilisation, a great contribution to bring hope and to encourage the struggle for the better life to which we are entitled.
It has also been a great ideological campaign that confronts the lies, manipulation, misinformation and ideological offensive by Capital, which does everything it can to justify low wages and to hide its colossal profits.
It has been a great campaign that places at its core the answers needed by workers, youth and our people.
It has been a journey for wages, pensions, access to healthcare and the strengthening of the NHS, the right to housing and childcare.
This action has so far collected 78,592 signatures, every one of which involving conversations and support for this political proposal, but also strength and encouragement telling us to go ahead.
An action that is and was structuring in the preparation for the Congress, and one that the Congress is now projecting and relaunching.
We have a Party that we are proud of, we value the selfless activity of this great collective. But we want more.
The workers, the people and the youth need their Party to be even stronger.
Strengthening the organisation in all its many aspects is a constant and permanent task for a revolutionary party.
That is what we have done, that is what we are doing and that is what we need to continue doing, as the Congress will certainly emphasise.
We need to recruit more, welcoming and integrating those who join the Party but also taking the initiative with others to recruit them.
And in this regard, let me welcome the nearly 3,500 new militants who have joined the Party since the last Congress, many of them already integrated and with responsibilities, including in this hall as delegates and guests of the Congress.
This is the fundamental reason why we need to recruit. It is not a statistical issue. It is action, it is so that there may be more of us to, in an organised way, fight, act and transform.
We need to develop our information and propaganda work using the most diverse means, those that have shown their importance over many years and others that are more recent, including the full breadth of digital media.
The Party press has an essential role to play.
We need more militants and friends to buy, read and disseminate Avante! and O Militante.
The Communists, but also many of our friends, cannot do without the voice of truth, resistance and information.
We have taken important steps with the campaign to circulate Avante! but we need to go even further.
There are many ways and means to convey the Party's message. We need to make the most of them all. But the most solid instrument at our disposal, the one that is not dependent on algorithms or the will of the big telecom empires, is Avante!
Its production and circulation depend solely on our will and ability. So let us make it what it really is, an instrument of party building.
We have successfully achieved the goal of creating 100 Party cells, with 100 comrades in charge, a decisive step for a Party like ours.
We now face the challenge of continuing this work by creating new cells, ensuring their regular operation and taking the initiative, because the workers need their Party in companies and workplaces.
We need to continue and intensify the most important task facing us in terms of strengthening the Party, attributing responsibilities to cadres.
Life is demonstrating this urgency.
More cadres with responsibilities means more capacity to give the necessary response, to take the initiative and to be better prepared to respond to the ongoing offensive.
We set ourselves the goal of attributing responsibilities to 1,000 new cadres, and today we have 1042 new cadres with responsibilities, with everything that this means for the functioning of the Party.
And we need more. We need a Party that is even more active and capable of taking the initiative. We need more cadres, and we will have more cadres with responsibilities.
This task has been proposed to the Congress and a call made for a thousand additional new cadres to take on responsibilities.
We are aware of our difficulties, we certainly will not always do everything right, and we are far from burying our heads in the sand.
It is on the basis of the Party reality that we have, and not on the one we would like to have, that we take the necessary measures to overcome shortcomings and move forward.
With the XXII Congress, we launch a general movement to strengthen the work of leadership and structuring, combined with attributing more responsibilities to cadres.
Measures aimed at strengthening the Party and taking the initiative, continuing to do what has been done and what must be stepped up.
Taking the initiative on concrete problems that affect the lives of our people throughout the country.
Taking the initiative in work that organisations must and can take on, in order to be more closely connected to reality.
Taking the initiative in extending the CDU to many men and women with no party affiliation, starting already with the next local elections.
Taking the initiative on all fronts and creating new fronts of intervention.
Taking the initiative in the ideological battle, in denouncing capitalism, its nature and its crimes, and in affirming socialism as a requirement for today and for the future.
Here is the PCP!
Here is the force of April.
The force of resistance against fascism and the fight for freedom.
The force of the great revolutionary achievements and transformations of 25th April and of the fight against right-wing policies.
The force that takes the initiative and mobilises the workers and the popular masses in the fight for a better life.
The force of opposition to the government and right-wing policies.
The force of rupture and change.
The driving force behind the patriotic and left-wing political alternative.
The force for freedom, democracy and socialism.
Here is the PCP, ready to fulfil its role with the working class, the workers and the people.
Ready to face what lies ahead with courage, determination and initiative.
Here is the PCP, with the confidence of those who, with more than a century of intervention, know that it is in the struggle of the workers and the people and in the decisive role of the PCP that lie the conditions to resist, move forward and win.
Here is the PCP, ready to take the initiative, for April, for democracy, for socialism and communism.
Long live Peace and solidarity!
Long live the JCP!
Long live the Portuguese Communist Party!
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"April" is a reference to the Carnation Revolution that overthrew fascism in Portugal in April, 1975. Learn more at: Carnation Revolution in Portugal, April 25, 1974
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