In a speech following a luncheon introducing municipal candidates in São Domingos de Rana (Cascais), Paulo Raimundo stated that the country is “held together by threads,” criticizing the government’s “anti-popular policy” and its use of the far-right as a “can opener” to pave its way.
“In light of all this, we have a PS that presents itself as truly jealous of the union between PSD, CDS, IL, and Chega,” the PCP Secretary-General accused.
Paulo Raimundo asserted that what is needed is not a PS “jealous of this ongoing union,” but rather a PS that chooses to “oppose, fight, and confront this policy.”
“That is what is necessary, that is what is demanded, but that is not what is happening. The PS wants to be the bride of this policy, and that is not what matters, that does not serve our people,” he declared.
During his speech, Paulo Raimundo issued harsh criticism of the government’s policy, particularly addressing the draft labor reform project approved this Thursday by the Council of Ministers.
For the PCP Secretary-General, it constitutes a “declaration of war against workers and, in particular, the youth,” leading to “more precariousness” in addition to the already “brutal precariousness.”
Paulo Raimundo emphasized that through labor reform, the government intends to introduce “more hours, more work time, and more deregulation of schedules,” while increasing “attacks on the rights of workers, particularly and symbolically, the right to strike.”
“One could 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 they are offering us,” he remarked sarcastically.
In a call for mobilization against this reform, Paulo Raimundo warned that opposition to the measure “won’t happen with warnings,” nor with: “hold me back or I will go at them.”
“The red lines were crossed a long time ago. This must be confronted in an organized way, with the workers’ struggle, for their rights, for their aspirations, for the better life to which they are entitled,” he said.
Paulo Raimundo expressed confidence that the workers “will not allow this government, nostalgic for the ‘troika,’ to implement the measures it could not during the troika period.”
He then addressed the recent appointment of Álvaro Santos Pereira as governor of the Bank of Portugal, remarking that the executive made the announcement “with great pomp and circumstance” when it is “only and simply” appointing “a new employee of the European Central Bank (ECB).”
“No more, no less: a servant of the ECB, an ECB employee, incapable, by his own choice, of determining anything in our country’s monetary and banking policy,” he maintained.
