During a lunch meeting to introduce local election candidates in São Domingos de Rana (Cascais), Paulo Raimundo expressed that the country is “held together by threads” and accused the government of pursuing an “anti-people policy,” using the far-right as a “can-opener” to pave the way.
“In light of all this, we have a PS that presents itself as a true jealous party of the marriage between PSD, CDS, IL, and Chega,” said the PCP general secretary.
Paulo Raimundo argued that what is needed is not a PS “jealous of this ongoing marriage,” but a PS that decides to “oppose, combat, and confront this policy.”
“That’s what’s necessary, what should happen, but it’s not what is happening. The PS wants to be the bride of this policy, and that’s not what’s important, that’s not what serves our people,” he stated.
In this speech, Paulo Raimundo heavily criticized the government’s policy, particularly addressing the draft labor reform approved this Thursday by the Council of Ministers.
According to the PCP general secretary, it is a “declaration of war on workers and, particularly, on youth,” and will add “more precariousness” to the already “brutal precariousness.”
Paulo Raimundo emphasized that through a labor reform, the government aims to add “more hours, more working time, and more deregulation of schedules,” besides wanting to intensify “attacks on workers’ rights, particularly, and symbolically, on the right to strike.”
“One might say: the government will not alter the right to strike. That’s true. The right to strike remains. People just won’t be able to strike. Thank you very much for the privilege you’re trying to offer us,” he remarked sarcastically.
In a call for mobilization against this reform, Paulo Raimundo warned that opposing the measure “won’t be achieved with warnings,” nor with: “hold me back, or I will go for them.”
“The red lines were crossed a long time ago. This will be resolved in an organized way, with the struggle of workers, for their rights, for their aspirations, for the better life they deserve,” he said.
Paulo Raimundo expressed confidence that workers “will not allow this government, nostalgic for the ‘troika,’ to implement the measures it couldn’t implement during the ‘troika’ era.”
Later, Paulo Raimundo addressed the recent appointment of Álvaro Santos Pereira as the governor of the Bank of Portugal, claiming that the executive announced it “with great pomp and circumstance,” while merely appointing “a new official of the European Central Bank (ECB).”
“Not more, not less: a lackey of the ECB, an ECB official, incapable, by his choice, of determining anything in the monetary and banking policy in our country,” he maintained.
