“When faced with calls for division and hatred, what all of us and the youth must do is respond with unity,” declared Paulo Raimundo, “and once and for all, we must combat this disastrous path.”
Paulo Raimundo spoke at the session presenting the CDU candidates for the municipal bodies of the Benavente Council, where he praised everyone committed to the project, whether as elected officials or activists. He especially mentioned Carlos Coutinho, the campaign mandatary for the council, and the coalition allies forming the “unified front that is the CDU,” including the Green Ecologist Party and the Democratic Intervention Association.
He emphasized that “in the CDU, independents are not accessories or figures for photos; they are protagonists and builders of this, their project. They are needed, they count, and they determine, and we increasingly need them,” in a country scenario “held together by strings.”
“The CDU is a space for very diverse people, people who may have taken different stances [in previous elections], may have voted for this or that party and supported this or that force, but they know, from their own experience, what the management of the CDU means, what it is worth, and what it represents in the context of its action, with an eye to the future.”
“Here there is work, competence, and people connected to life […] and reality as it is, not as they try to sell it to us,” he stressed.
“Here, contrary to a significant part of the country, there is no illusion and no selling snake oil,” he reiterated, adding: “We have a country that is held together by strings,” referring to the “housing drama with unbearable costs,” the lack of professionals in the National Health Service, and the shortage of teachers and staff in public schools.
“Considering this, the path presented to us is more privatizations, more dismantling, and the transfer of public resources, our money, to those who make a business out of illness,” he emphasized.
Speaking about the social consultation meeting last Thursday, he accused the Government of delivering “the text that big business wrote for them” and stated that the words dominating the solutions presented by the Executive were three: “to flexibilize, which for us has one concept, but for them means more precariousness, modernization, which in the government’s terms means more hours, and the third is ‘reforms are needed’.
Thus, he concluded, “despite the difficult reality, they want more precariousness, more hours, they want to get their hands on Social Security money, which, it’s important to remember, is labor money.”
Regarding the extraordinary support to pensioners, Paulo Raimundo said that “anything that comes is welcome,” but what guarantees a dignified life to those who worked all their lives “is not occasional support every time there is an election.”
What is needed, he argued, “is the extraordinary increase of all pensions.”
