In a speech during the traditional rally at the Festa do Avante in Quinta da Atalaia, Seixal, Paulo Raimundo criticized the Socialist Party (PS) for “jostling with Chega to see who is most complicit with the government, to determine who is the favorite partner of a State Budget” which, he asserted, would serve to “accelerate the dismantling of the National Health Service, attack public services, promote privatizations,” and “maintain a country dependent on low wages and low pensions.”
“Faced with this, no one can claim to be deceived. Right-wing politics is not opposed by extending a hand, but by obstructing it. And the PS, as always, seems willing to extend not one, but both hands to the government and its policies,” he accused, receiving applause from the audience.
“As for the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), we are here to firmly oppose and indeed to impede it, because that is what is important for our lives and for our country,” he assured.
Paulo Raimundo argued that the PSD/CDS government “resembles a business agency for economic groups” and highlighted that in the current political landscape, “each instrument plays its designated role”: the PSD and CDS govern, the Liberal Initiative serves as an “ideological hare” for the executive, and Chega as a “factory of lies.”
Chega is characterized as “the demagoguery, the familiar clamor, and is the tool created by the system to try to accelerate the system’s own objectives. It is the can opener of the worst of right-wing politics,” he accused.
Surrounded by the PCP’s Central Committee on the main stage of the Festa do Avante, and in front of thousands of supporters and party members, Paulo Raimundo described the policies pursued by the executive as “in confrontation with the majority.”
“A policy that uses immigrants and the most disadvantaged as scapegoats for its disastrous consequences. A policy serving a minority who consider themselves owners of everything and are never questioned about nationality, language, religion, or culture,” he stated.
The secretary-general of the PCP claimed that, for the government, “even fires are a business,” accusing it of conducting “business over the forest, with appetites targeting small properties, it’s the mega-business of leasing aerial means.”
“Consider what we have reached, and it is not just the annual drama of fires; it also affects several areas, some of which are critical,” he mentioned.
Raimundo then implicitly criticized right-wing parties, particularly the Liberal Initiative, by stating that the issue in Portugal is not “having more and more State, as the ‘Mileis’ of the public square claim.”
“The problem is the dismantling of public structures, having a state which, by choice of successive governments, has fewer and fewer means and capacity to respond,” he noted, while particularly referencing the PSD/CDS, stating that “nostalgics of the ‘troika’ era” assert that “the country is better.”
“Yes, a small part of the country is better. The banks, economic groups, and multinationals are better,” acknowledged Raimundo, contrasting this by asserting that for workers, “life is difficult.”
“And they would like the people, workers, and youth to return to that time of eat and shut up. But they are very, indeed very, mistaken,” he emphasized.
At the start of his address, Raimundo touched upon the international situation to argue that “it is not possible to turn a blind eye to the genocide currently occurring” in Palestine.
“The Portuguese government must immediately and unconditionally recognize the State of Palestine, with the 1967 borders and its capital in Jerusalem, as well as the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” he advocated.
[News updated at 8:05 PM]
