“I believe that April 25th and May 1st should be significant moments to assert the demands placed on people’s lives. April is connected to the hope it opened for rights, the National Health Service [SNS], access to housing, labor rights—April is all of that,” stated Paulo Raimundo, speaking to journalists after a lunch with supporters in Loures.
The communist leader, at an event celebrating April 25th, outlined five key points for the Democratic Unitarian Coalition (CDU)—which unites the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Ecologist Party “The Greens” (PEV): salaries, pensions, nurseries, the SNS, and housing.
During his address to the approximately 300 attendees, Paulo Raimundo emphasized the need for the country to prioritize the SNS.
“It isn’t about lowering corporate taxes, it’s not about fiscal benefits, it’s not for non-residents, it’s not for war. It’s for the National Health Service that matters, to finally invest with all the necessary conditions so that it fulfills its role, the role that April enshrined in all our lives,” he declared.
“We don’t need war. April ended the war. April established a country of peace and cooperation. With us, not a cent goes to war: all money is in service of the people, our rights. That is what’s required,” he emphasized.
Paulo Raimundo called for efforts to “open paths for peace in Ukraine” and “peace and an end to the massacre and genocide of the Palestinian people, once and for all.”
The communist leader stressed that Portugal does not need to be “subservient to the United States” or “submissive to the interests of the major powers of the European Union.” “What the country needs is to produce more: we have the conditions, we have resources, we have people,” he asserted.
Questioned about the closing of the investigation into the income of the PSD leader and prime minister of the outgoing government, Luís Montenegro, Raimundo stated it was not his place to comment on legal proceedings but reiterated that Montenegro should have resigned.
“Given the fact that he was receiving payments for months and months, as prime minister he should have taken a dignified, democratic stance that would contribute to democracy, which was to resign,” he emphasized.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office considered that the social-democratic leader had clarified all doubts regarding his income declaration and closed the case with the Constitutional Court.
This information was contained in a statement released on Saturday by the PSD, which included the dismissal order, following reports from various media outlets indicating that the prime minister had not clarified all the magistrates’ questions regarding his bank accounts and that the case remained open.
In Paulo Raimundo’s view, by not resigning, “his ethical principle was harmed and will remain harmed,” but he preserved “the politics and commitments he has with economic groups.”
