Fernando Rosas, a figurehead of the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal, addressed a rally at the Portuguese Institute of Youth in Leiria, emphasizing that “casting a useful vote should not mean perpetuating the rotating monopoly in governance by the PS and the PSD.” He criticized this approach as failing to address critical issues such as housing, inequality, health, and low wages.
Rosas, who returns to the party’s lists more than a decade later, posed a series of questions to support his argument. “Has the absolute majority of the PS resolved or even started to resolve the lack of housing and unaffordable rents for ordinary citizens? Or the shortage of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers? The closed emergency rooms or the destruction of the National Health Service amid a privatization offensive?” He labeled these as issues that have not been addressed, describing their neglect as an “unforgivable failure.”
The veteran politician didn’t spare criticism for the PSD government either, which he argued worsened these “distressing situations” by pretending to resolve them through the “commodification and privatization of essential public services.” This, according to Rosas, allowed “rampant speculation with housing prices and rents and subjected health to private business profit motives.”
“We must state this unequivocally. The failure of this rotation without alternation that managed neoliberal capitalism is at the root of the crisis of the democratic system, the insecurity, fear, and anger it spreads, fueling the neo-fascist, thuggish, and obscurantist far-right that manipulates them unscrupulously,” he asserted.
Rosas argued for breaking this vicious cycle via a leftist approach, aligning with the united people’s rights and the values of April, emphasizing, “In Portugal, in Trump’s United States, or across Europe, casting a useful vote is to break away from this cycle by voting for Bloco, to change life.”
In his address, Rosas also targeted current deputies from the PSD, PS, and Chega elected in the Leiria district. He accused them of being “more or less loquacious and always very obsequious heralds of wealthy entrepreneurs’ causes, land speculators, extractivism excesses, local bosses, and both old and new fascists,” but certainly not representatives of those who endure hardships to produce prosperity and wealth for the district.
Having stepped away from parliamentary life in 2010, Rosas reaffirmed his commitment to the Bloco de Esquerda’s ethos. He described the party as “a left that does not give up, that swims against the tide, that is unafraid of difficulties.”
“A left that has always dared to fight and therefore, I believe in myself, will dare to win,” he concluded.
Read more: [Pedro Nuno issues a warning and appeal: “Let no one disperse their vote”](https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/politica/2781575/pedro-nuno-faz-alerta-e-apelo-que-ninguem-disperse-o-voto)
