Image of the rally via the PCP
The tour-de-force speech on international and domestic issues given on September 8 by Paulo Raimundo, General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party at the Avante! Festival. The Avante! Festival is an annual three day celebration held by the party with food, music, art, entertainment and politics all mixed together. It is attended by thousands every year.
What a beautiful Festival this is, built inch by inch by thousands of militants and friends of the Party and of the Festival.
Please allow me to say a special word to the JCP and the youth who have made their presence felt and made this Festival their own, which in the words of Álvaro Cunhal is “the biggest, the most amazing, the most fraternal and humane ever held in our country”.
A salute to the artists, sportsmen and sportswomen, to all those who ensure the Festival and its entire operation. A salute to the visitors and especially to the many who are here for the first time.
You are all welcome, this is your Festival, next year on September5, 6 and 7, we'll be here again. And here´s our commitment: today we're celebrating in Atalaia, tomorrow we'll be tackling problems and difficulties, with determination and joy in the struggle, and you can always count on the Portuguese Communist Party.
Here are those who don't cave in the struggle for a better world.
A goal we share with the dozens of international delegations, who honour us with their presence and whom we welcome fraternally. They have the solidarity of the PCP in this common struggle for the rights and aspirations of our peoples. They have the PCP's commitment to strengthen the international communist and revolutionary movement and to broaden the anti-imperialist front.
From here we salute the courageous Palestinian people and affirm our solidarity with their liberating struggle.
Today we remember the moment, on that Saturday of September 6, 2003, 21 years ago, when Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the PLO, at the time besieged in Ramallah by the Israeli army, established a telephone contact that enabled his voice to be broadcast live to the participants of the Avante! Festival and to all the Portuguese people.
It was a marking and unforgettable moment in which the historic resistance leader thanked the Portuguese people for their support for the Palestinian national cause.
When today the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank are being massacred by Israel, here we are, saying enough is enough and fulfilling that long-standing commitment.
We do not remain silent on the genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel's war machine, with the support of the United States of America and the European Union. These from whom no initiative comes for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the recognition of the State of Palestine, as determined by United Nations resolutions.
On the contrary, what we see is the shipping of weapons and more weapons to continue the genocide.
This is what we need to stop and question, as we did in the European Parliament, through the voice of our elected MEP, demanding the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
They are hypocrites, accomplices and promoters of the ongoing massacre, and sooner rather than later they will have to answer for it.
But Palestine is not alone, the Palestinian people are not alone. The solidarity it lacks from governments bowing to the US and Israel, such as the PSD/CDS government that stubbornly refuses to recognise the State of Palestine, it has from the people taking to the streets all over the world, and Portugal is no exception.
A struggle and solidarity that is expressed here and that will continue. With the strength and courage of the Palestinian people and the solidarity of all of us - Palestine will win!
From here we send a strong salute to the workers and peoples around the world who are fighting and moving forward.
Examples of resistance and processes of change that are asserting themselves and challenging the imperialist order, in which China plays a key role and various multilateral co-operations are gaining prominence.
An embrace of solidarity to Cuba and its Revolution, to Bolivarian Venezuela and the Venezuelan people, to the Saharawi people and their struggle for national liberation, examples, among many others, of heroic resistance and a factor of hope and confidence in the just struggle we are waging.
At a time when the US and other capitalist powers do not hesitate to use their armed wing, NATO, or fascism to intensify their provocations, blackmail, sanctions, blockades, interference, coups and wars against countries and peoples who don't submit to their orders.
From here we affirm and defend peace and fight those who make of death and destruction a guarantee of profit for the arms industry. We are not dragged into the propaganda of war, hate speech and militarism. We do not give up – yes to Peace, no to war.
Here we do not forget the thousands of dead in the Mediterranean Sea, abandoned by a European Union that pays lip service to human rights. A European Union that is increasingly at the behest of the US, at the service of economic interests and militarism, and which opens the door to reactionary and fascist conceptions and forces.
Here we know that capitalism is the system of poverty, hunger, disease and where everything is business: healthcare, education, childhood, old age, human beings themselves, death, war, the environment, water and all other natural resources.
Capitalism is exploitation, predation, injustice, inequality, it is not and never will be green and its revolutionary overcoming is the great goal and necessity of the workers and peoples.
It is a fight we are waging in Portugal, where 2 million people who live and work here face poverty and social exclusion, while the richest 10 per cent concentrate more than half of all the wealth produced.
Injustice and inequality resulting from a policy that serves the interests of big capital but does not serve the majority. It does not serve the workers, who are disrespected, often forced to work two or three jobs, thrown into low wages, precariousness, unregulated working hours, devalued careers and professions.
It does not serve dismantled public services with a shortage of professionals.
This liberal path, of every man for himself, does not serve the youth, with precarious jobs and lives, false independent workers, unemployed, increasingly lower wages, more difficulty in accessing housing and being forced to emigrate.
It does not serve pensioners who cannot afford food and medicine.
It does not serve the users of the National Health Service, particularly those who still don't have a family doctor, pregnant women and children who are subjected to permanent instability and insecurity, such as that experienced once again this weekend, with many emergencies closed.
It does not serve the immigrants, who are subjected to inhumane working and living conditions and are increasingly thrown into human trafficking networks.
It does not serve small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, strangled by the costs of energy, credit, insurance and communications, all sectors that are in the hands of big capital.
It does not help the farmers, especially wine producers, who are facing huge difficulties.
It does not serve those who sacrifice everything to access or maintain a home, facing unbearable mortgage payments and rents.
This policy does not serve those facing the rising cost of living, but it does serve the banks and their 14 million euros a day in profits.
It serves those who make illness the most profitable business after arms trafficking, as one of the shareholders of the Luz Saúde group pointed out.
It serves large retail groups, which squeezes producers and consumers.
It serves the telecoms operators, the motorway and airport concessionaires.
It serves those who are preparing new attacks on workers' rights and the robbery of social security money.
It serves the hypocrites who pay lip service to the idea of less State, but who live off the back of a State that hands over companies to them and guarantees them millionaire deals, a reduction in corporate income tax, various tax benefits and extra rents from public-private partnerships.
It serves those who use influence peddling and corruption for their shady deals and who, as we have always said, have privatisations as one of their main instruments.
As has now come to light with the Inspectorate-General of Finance's report on the privatisation of TAP in 2015, confirming what the PCP has always said: TAP was bought with TAP's own money in a deal that could and should have been investigated to the full in the parliamentary committee of inquiry, as the PCP proposed, had it not been for the refusal of others, including the PS and BE.
This is yet another economic and political crime that makes it clear how urgent it is to stop the new privatisation underway, guaranteeing public management that puts TAP at the service of the country.
Faced with yet another case, how long will the PS and PSD continue to hold up the parliamentary committee of inquiry into another crime - the privatisation of ANA?
We are not giving up this battle.
It's now the time for the PSD and CDS to take over the governance and execution of this disastrous course, with their proxies from Chega and IL, who, as well as being staunch supporters of the options being pursued, are true racing hares of the old nostalgic and reactionary prescriptions that April put an end to - if there's one thing the country does not need, it's prescriptions along the lines of Pinochet's Chile or Milei's Argentina.
As for the PS, which claims to be the opposition, when it had the chance to reverse this path, it not only failed to do so, but it threw the doors wide open.
A PS that is now preparing, with minimum services that it calls red lines, to justify the viability of the current policy.
The issue is not the differences between these parties, but what unites them. All of them bowed to the orders of the European Union, submissive to the interests of the economic groups and protagonists and accomplices in privatisations, of the destruction of the productive apparatus and the alienation of national sovereignty.
This is a course that the current government is continuing and intensifying, and where the new and serious steps in the privatisation of healthcare announced this week are just the latest example.
With every passing day, every decision and every new package, the PSD/CDS government is giving weight to the interests of monopoly capital. A dangerous agenda of exploitation, destruction of public services and alienation of national interests that has to be defeated.
We are facing a project that is developing rapidly and on which we cannot stand on the fence.
Either you are with those who want to deepen right-wing policies and complete the counter-revolutionary process, or you are with the forces of April and the Constitution. Either you govern for the majority, or you are at the service of a minority that grabs a large part of the wealth that is created. This is the most important challenge and the choice facing democrats and patriots.
What political choices should be made and at whose service?
This is the answer that needs to be given, and right now in the State Budget, and don't bring the blackmail of political instability. The real instability is in people's lives, and today's and yesterday's governments haven't responded to that.
All of them, PSD, CDS and PS, Chega and IL, talk about the Budget as if there were no real country. They talk about referendums, red lines, ultimatums and the like when what is needed is a response, and now: to pregnant women who can't get to an obstetrician's surgery, to workers and pensioners who are always making ends meet, to those who can't access housing, to children without a place in nursery or pre-school, to students without teachers and without the financial means to attend university, to immigrants who sometimes spend years trying to regularise their situation.
This is the real life that needs stability and that will once again not be addressed in the State Budget of a government that is bent on propaganda and illusion and that turns every problem into a new business opportunity for economic groups.
Let everyone assume their responsibilities, without shadow plays or manoeuvres.
On our part, our choice is clear: we will be there to warn and denounce the real objectives and who the Budget really serves. We will be there to table the necessary measures that, in the Budget and beyond, respond to the problems, which are many and structural. The country can no longer stand a path that is making Portugal more unfair and dependent.
With the struggle of the workers and the people and through the intervention of the PCP, the force that consistently confronts this policy, it is possible and urgent to build the alternative and move ahead with a different policy. Count on the PCP for this demanding but exhilarating journey.
This path is being built at all levels and also in Local Government, where we have proven ourselves with local government management in which the CDU makes a difference compared to all the others.
CDU, this irreplaceable coalition, open to the participation of many thousands of people with no party affiliation and which we share with the Ecologist Party “The Greens” and the Intervenção Democrática Association, our allies whom we salute from here.
It is a project to go further and reach more people and new protagonists who recognise that this is their space of action for a better life, the strength of work, honesty and competence, of this force that knows, contrary to what they tell us, that the country has a future. We are not destined to be a country of low wages, poverty and dependency, and as we have said so many times, in the life of the people there are no dead ends.
There is an answer to national problems. Portugal has the means, the resources, the strength, honest people and it has in April and in the Constitution of the Republic the instruments to carry out a sovereign patriotic policy free from external constraints and impositions, a left-wing policy with work and the workers at the centre of its action.
An alternative policy that guarantees the youth wages, stability and the conditions to study, work, live and be happy here.
The alternative that boosts the knowledge and know-how of scientific and other skilled workers, recognises their rights and puts them at the heart of the country's development.
That respects those who have worked their entire lives and guarantees access to retirement without cuts after 40 years of social security payments.
The alternative that knows that one-off measures, while important for those who receive them at the moment, cannot serve as an excuse for pensions not to increase as they need to.
That knows that expenses heavily weigh every month and can't be solved with one-off support; what is needed is a significant increase in pensions.
The alternative that sees the rights of children and parents as a structural factor. It was through the PCP's intervention that the journey began that allowed 85,000 children to have free nursery places last school year, a far-reaching step but far from what is needed. We urgently need to create 100,000 new vacancies and a public and national network of free nurseries.
The alternative that affirms the National Health Service as the only guarantee of access to healthcare for all. The alternative that respects and values careers and wages and creates working conditions for healthcare professionals, to keep them where they are needed, in the National Health Service.
This is the alternative that does not accept the situation in education, and that's why we're going to confront the government in the Assembly of the Republic with the opening of a school year that once again starts with a shortage of teachers and other professionals.
The alternative that puts bank profits to support rising interest rates, gives stability to rental contracts, stops evictions, regulates rents and invests 1% of GDP per year in public housing.
The alternative that stops privatisations, that gets the country producing more to import less.
The alternative that defends the environment, that invests in public transport, that guarantees water and its management as an exclusively public asset.
The alternative that responds to the great national emergency - a general and significant increase in wages. An increase for all workers and the valorisation of their careers and professions.
This is what is needed in the face of the reality of life and the needs of workers, and a fairer distribution of the wealth created. Those who create wealth, who ensure the functioning of the country, who ensure economic activity, must be respected and valued, they must have a wage that gives them a decent life.
The workers, the people and the youth will not give up on this objective, and the PCP will not give up on this fight. Today, at the Avante! Festival, we are launching a national campaign to put wages at the centre of the political debate. ‘More wages, more pensions, for a better life’.
In a broad action of contact, mobilisation, involvement and participation, in companies and workplaces, in the streets and squares of the country, on public transport, in schools and markets, everywhere, this is the challenge we're going to set to every worker, every youth, every woman, every pensioner.
A necessary action on the urgent measures and responses that are needed in everyone's life. We trust the strength of the workers and the people, we trust the creativity and willingness of the youth, we trust this struggle that in the popular commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the April Revolution and in the May Day struggles this year was transformed into unforgettable and moving moments of affirmation of values, achievements and the strength to defend April and respect those who work.
From this April Festival, we leave a big salute to all those who resist and fight and who rightly aspire to a better life.
A salute to the CGTP-IN, the great trade union central of the Portuguese workers, to this organised force of the workers that every day in the sectors, companies and workplaces expresses itself in resistance, struggle and the achievement of rights, wages, advances in careers and professions, respect and appreciation of those who work.
A response of great scale and significance, a great affirmation of the rights and strength of the workers, a fair struggle that is there and will intensify.
A salute to the fight for the National Health Service, in the actions of nurses, doctors and other professionals, and the population.
A struggle for a decent life, which we welcome, and which will bring thousands to the streets in various localities on September 28 for the right to housing.
A struggle that is being fought for education, agriculture and public services, against racism, xenophobia, discrimination, injustice and inequality.
Struggles in which the PCP has never been absent. In good times and in the most difficult, we were there, and we are here, in companies, localities, streets, neighbourhoods and on all fronts.
Aware of the difficulties and with our feet on the ground, we are building a great journey at the service of the workers, the people and the youth, the XXII Congress of the Portuguese Communist Party, a moment of participation, reflection and the irreplaceable contribution of the Party's organisations and members, a process of debate and collective decision-making unparalleled in our country.
We want more Party so that we can be more connected to the masses, to their problems and aspirations, and gather there strength, resources and cadres to continue the struggle.
We want a more structured and organised Party to intervene better and make the struggle of the workers, the people and the youth stronger, to converge and give hope and confidence to democrats and patriots.
We want a Party that is stronger ideologically in order to better face the difficult national and international scenario that will demand from each and every one of us the courage, determination and militancy that characterise us.
We stand up to the interests of economic groups, multinationals and their vassals, and for this we pay the price of discrimination and silencing, lies and slander.
So it was, so it is and so it will be. But however much it pains some, the PCP, with its communist identity, class nature, operating principles and theoretical basis, Marxism-Leninism, this patriotic and internationalist Party linked to the workers and the people, which doesn't let itself be carried away by momentary occasions, was and is capable of resisting and moving forward.
We have reason to be proud of our Party and its more than 100 years of struggle, against fascism, for freedom and democracy, of its decisive role in the April Revolution and in the defence of its achievements.
It is with great confidence, joy and pride that we are the protagonists and bearers of the most beautiful ideal and objective that can be set for the youth, the workers and the people: the new society, socialism and communism.
We are here. We are with those who create wealth, with those who have worked their entire lives; we are with the youth, the intellectuals, the women; we are with those who are looking for a better life in Portugal; we are with those who work the land and those who cast their nets into the sea; we are with those who work shifts, nights and weekends; we are with the small entrepreneurs; we are with those who emigrate, we are with children's rights, with people with disabilities, we are with those who clean, with those who are carers, with those who guarantee the National Health Service, education, security, defence, justice and all services, we are with those who create art and culture, with those who design and build, we are with those who drive, with those who produce, we are with those who ensure that the country works, we are with the working class and all workers, we are with the majority, this is proudly our option.
With determination, with confidence, with reason and truth on our side, for the Values of April in the future of Portugal, for Socialism and Communism, the struggle continues!
Long live Internationalist solidarity!
Long live Peace!
Long live the Avante! Festival
Long live the Portuguese Communist Youth!
Long live the Portuguese Communist Party!
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