During a public session in Avis, Montalegre district, Paulo Raimundo declared that the Government’s housing proposals, announced this Thursday following a Council of Ministers meeting, are “an affront” to the people.
“It is an affront to consider 2,300 euros as a moderate rent for housing. One must ask: in what country do those who think 2,300 euros is a moderate rent live? It can’t be in a country with 2.7 million workers earning 1,000 euros gross per month,” he stated.
Paulo Raimundo suggested that this “illusion” of moderate rents being 2,300 euros is held by those with “a lot of business to conduct” and who have “many commitments to those who profit most from the majority’s effort.”
The general secretary of the PCP noted that while the Government views 2,300 euros as moderate rent, it believes the constitutional article ensuring the right to housing “should remain at the mercy of the speculative market, as the market will solve everything.”
“This won’t be solved with the market at play. It will be solved with the State regulating, taking charge, and imposing the necessary path to address the housing problem,” he asserted.
In his speech, Paulo Raimundo also criticized the labor changes backed by the Government, emphasizing the need to “defeat the employer’s package serving the employers.”
“This labor package shames all workers who, for one reason or another, for one motivation or another, due to one trailing idea or another, voted for the PSD, CDS, Chega, and IL. All those who voted for these forces are today, with just cause, deeply ashamed of what they did,” he argued.
After his speech, speaking to journalists, Paulo Raimundo discussed the Prime Minister’s office linking, in a response to the newspaper Público, the timing of document requests related to the preventive inquiry into the Spinumviva case to two electoral campaigns, suggesting political motivations behind the Public Prosecutor’s timing.
The PCP general secretary recalled that when the first revelations about Spinumviva emerged, he argued Luís Montenegro should have resigned, criticizing the Prime Minister for remaining in office and thinking the legislative election results would “erase that wrong choice he made.”
Paulo Raimundo remarked that the Public Prosecutor “requests documents when deemed necessary” and stressed that this is only a controversy “because the Prime Minister made the decision he did at that time.”
“Had he resigned, none of this would be happening today. The Prime Minister’s decision has dragged the country into this situation. We’ll see how this ends,” he mentioned.
The PCP general secretary made these statements after a lunch rally in Avis, in the municipality of Portalegre, a stronghold of the CDU since 1976. In these local elections, the coalition supports Manuel Coelho, as the current mayor, Nuno Silva, cannot run again due to reaching the limit of three consecutive terms.
In a speech at this rally, Manuel Coelho emphasized that the CDU consists of “men and women who assume their responsibilities, 365 days a year” and “do not wake up to life and the municipality only a few months before the elections,” and that, the day after the polls, “they do not go back to hibernating and disappearing for another four years.”
There are five candidacies for the Avis Municipal Chamber: CDU, PSD, PS, Chega, and the Citizens Group for Avis (GCA).
