EN: "Comrades, allow me a note, a greeting and a warning. The note is to say this: Today, Thursday, 6:30 in the afternoon, we are holding an extraordinary rally here at Voz do Operário.

And when we say that there is strength, that there is determination, here it is, this strength, this determination, and this confidence, is that we will move forward. So a greeting to all of you.

And I warn you, if for any reason during the speech I lose my voice, here’s a commitment, I won’t lose my strength. So let’s go with strength.

Comrades, the national situation is marked by the resignation of the Prime Minister, precipitated by the judicial investigations involving the current government. Investigations into which we must ensure that all responsibilities are quickly clarified and cleared up, with all the consequences that this entails.

But even in relation to these events, some may now opportunistically talk about the promiscuity between economic and political power.

But what is extraordinary is that they don’t utter a single word about the foundations and causes of this very promiscuity, the center of corruption - the economic system based on capitalist accumulation.

What’s more, you don’t hear a word, not a single word, from these now indignant people about the biggest source of corruption, the heart of the deals that were and are privatizations.

Not a peep from the PS, PSD, CDS, Chega and IL about this, an absolute silence, a complicit silence that reveals their complete convergence with these authentic economic and financial crimes, the assessment of which goes far beyond mere political appreciation.

No matter how much they try to distract, no matter how many facts they create, the truth is that the Prime Minister’s resignation and the fall of the government are inseparable from his policy, a policy that fails to provide answers to the problems faced by the majority of the population and the country, while at the same time opening all the doors to increased profits and the concentration of wealth in the economic and financial groups.

And this is a central element in assessing the current situation.

A situation of growing injustice and inequality that leads to the frustration of expectations and the just struggle of the workers and the people.

The workers and the people are faced with the political crisis, but above all they have long been facing the crisis in their lives, they have long been facing the growing difficulties that didn’t start two weeks ago.

Today, as the PCP warned, everyone can see that the PS asked for political stability and many were deluded, but what the PS really wanted was stability in order to implement its fundamental right-wing policy.

Today we can all see what really happened two years ago around the so-called most left-wing budget ever.

Blackmail and pressure from the PS, support from the President of the Republic, and the country went to elections.

The PS had an absolute majority and the problems that needed to be tackled, particularly in the National Health Service, were not only left unresolved, but today we are in the situation we are in.

Life has disproved the illusion that led many to think that giving strength to the PS would act as life insurance, but the truth is that not only was the PS not an obstacle to right-wing politics, it was, by choice, its faithful protagonist.

The same PS that spent two years feeding and being fed by the most reactionary forces.

And it was by his hand, his government and his majority that the policy at the service of the economic groups was intensified, a policy in convergence with the positions that PSD, CDS, Chega and Liberal Initiative defend.

This is the truth, no matter how cynically they try to disguise it.

A convergence that has resulted in a scandalous accumulation of profits by big companies and hardship for the vast majority of the population.

And it is against this backdrop that the country is going to elections and that an opportunity is opening up to pave the way for another policy at the service of the workers and the people.

And it really is time to change politics.

It’s time for politics to once and for all be at the service of the workers, the people and the country and not, as has been the case up until now, to follow the interests, profits and wealth of the economic groups.

It’s time to increase wages and pensions, the central issue of our times.

It’s time to save the National Health Service from the hands of the sickness business and to respond to the just demands of doctors, nurses, technicians, all professionals and users.

It’s time to once and for all ensure the constitutional right to housing, guarantee public investment and regulate the most liberalized sector of the economy.

It’s time to respond, looking to the present and the future, to the rights of parents and children.

It’s time to control and bring down the prices of essential goods.

It’s time to get the country producing, stop privatizations and guarantee sovereignty and development.

It’s time to guarantee everyone’s right to a better life.

It’s time not to wait, but to step up the struggle of the workers and the people.

A struggle today to solve the problems of now, a struggle today to influence the decisions of tomorrow.

A salute to the CGTP-IN and the unitary trade union movement, a salute to the action and struggle in companies and workplaces, a salute for the response it gave on November 11, with the national demonstration and which was expressed right here on the streets of Lisbon, a struggle that will continue and which will have another important day in front of the Assembly of the Republic on November 29.

We extend our greetings to the people who are there demanding what is rightfully theirs, the rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic.

Let no one wait, because if the mortgage and rent, the ever-increasing monthly payments, the cost of living, the lack of appointments and treatments, the medicines we need, if none of this is waiting, the struggle cannot and will not wait either.

Elections are scheduled, let’s go to them.

This is an opportunity to strengthen the PCP and the CDU.

You can anticipate all possible and imaginary scenarios.

But what will determine the day after the elections is the strength and the MPs that the PCP and CDU have.

Today, more and more people have realized, from their own experience, that when the PCP and the CDU move forward, everyone’s life moves forward.

If this is the case, and it is, then it is in the interests of the workers and the people to strengthen the PCP and the CDU.

The PCP and the CDU will grow, we will increase the vote, we will elect more MPs, we will go as far as our people want us to.

And this will happen even against the wishes of those who would like it not to.

Against the will of the polls, an operation that seeks to condition and present winners and losers in advance.

An operation that, to the chagrin of some, failed in Madeira.

By the will of the people, the CDU grew, had more votes and a higher percentage.

We’re going to grow, even against the wishes of those who support the supposed bipolarization.

What a way for them to present the electoral dispute between left and right by reducing everything to the maxim “everything by form, nothing by content”.

But it’s around the content of politics that the real confrontation is fought, which policies, and who those policies serve.

The confrontation between the policy at the service of the economic groups and the alternative for the workers, the people and the country.

The confrontation is between the open door to 25 million a day in profits for the economic groups and the alternative of a general increase in wages for all workers, and in particular for the 3 million who earn up to 1,000 euros a month.

The confrontation is between the banks and their 12 million euros a day in profits and the millions of people who are squeezed every day, making every sacrifice to keep their roof over their head, their home and their small business or company.

What is and will be at stake is the option of handing over 8 billion public euros to private groups in the health business and the alternative of saving the National Health Service, retaining professionals and responding to users’ needs.

The confrontation is between the policy at the service of the richest 5%, who concentrate 42% of the wealth created, and the difficult day-to-day lives of the 2 million who are in poverty, hundreds of thousands of children and 72% of pensioners with pensions below 500 euros.

The confrontation is between criminal privatizations and public control of strategic instruments of sovereignty and national production.

The confrontation is and will be between the certain accounts of a few and the uncertainty in the daily lives of many.

This is the real bipolarization at stake.

The confrontation between the patriotic alternative, at the service of the country and its development, the left-wing alternative, with the workers and the people at the center of its action, the alternative of April and the Constitution of the Republic, in confrontation with the right-wing policy which, regardless of its protagonists, entirely serves the economic groups.

It is to this confrontation that all democrats and patriots, the workers and the people, all those who live and work here are called, to use their action, their struggle and also their vote for the CDU to demand the path of the alternative, our path, the path of April.

On the other side are the others who, beyond their differences and the different saviors and prophets they present, are, as their choices show, at the service of the interests of the economic and financial groups.

And that’s why they want us to spend our lives commenting on everything but the content of the policy.

Don’t count on the PCP to feed illusions, illusions don’t pay the bills and only serve to keep everything as it is.

Don’t expect anything to come from the PS to truly combat inequalities.

And if there were any doubts, the last two years have revealed their options and who they serve.

Fundamental options that have the applause of PSD, CDS, Chega and IL.

The only useful vote is for the CDU, the vote that fights the right-wing and its demagogic sloganeering, but which is a thin line with the owners of all this, the vote that really fights the reactionary forces and projects and those who cynically claim to be against the system but are the worst of the capitalist system.

The vote for the path that the country needs, the path that must be and has to be at the service of the workers and the people.

The PCP and the CDU will never be absent from this fight, as they have never been at any time in our history.

All democrats and patriots, workers and the people, all those who live and work here, are called to this confrontation.

They are summoned to make a choice: to keep control of all this in the hands of the economic groups or to open up a path that provides an answer to their problems and the better life to which we are entitled.

We are very confident about this electoral battle.

The PCP and the CDU are going to grow, they’re going to strengthen, they’re going to bring a sign of hope to the workers, the people, the democrats and all those who live and work here.

The confidence of those who are with the workers and the people every day, intervening in their problems.

A worker’s vote is worth as much as that of the boss of their company, but it can be worth even more if their vote is not put in the same bag as the boss’s vote.

The vote of each one of us is worth as much as that of the bank shareholder, but it will be worth much more if it is not given to parties that guarantee the bank’s millions at the expense of the workers and the people.

The vote of each user is worth as much as that of the owner of any private group in the health business, but it will be worth even more if it doesn’t end up in the pockets of the parties that want, in practice, to dismantle the SNS.

We need to break with the current policy, we need to fight its causes and those responsible, and we need to denounce each and every one of the ways in which they seek to maintain and worsen the state of things.

This fight must be directed at the root cause of the problems and difficulties faced by thousands of people who have been driven into despair and towards false ways out.

A fight against injustice and inequality, the core of which lies in exploitation and the imposition of the interests of the economic and financial groups and the policy that embodies them.

Those who make a lot of noise and puff up their chests with supposed truths, in reality what they want is for us to look at our neighbor, our colleague at work, the people we see on the bus, and point to them as the ones responsible for the situation, they want us to accuse everything and everyone but the real culprits, the system and the interests of the economic groups, exploitation, profits, injustice and inequalities.

Portugal has a future.

There are forces, there are means, there are resources and there are serious and honest people with the will and capacity to build the alternative that will raise the living conditions of the workers and the population and ensure the sovereignty and development of the country.

We want and we are going to achieve the better life we are fighting for, a better life for the workers, a better life for the peoples of the world, especially the Palestinian people, who are the target of a real massacre.

A crime that unfolds in the wake of complicit silences, hypocrisy and cynicism.

A ceasefire, an end to the war, compliance with United Nations resolutions, recognition and realization of the Palestinian state - this is what is demanded and nothing less.

Here we are, for that Palestine that will win, here we are as millions and millions are all over the world, including in Israel.

We’re here every day and we’ll be here on the 29th at the sit-in in Martim Moniz.

Here we are, here is the PCP, the Party that makes a difference; that is, at all times, on the side of the workers and the people; that defends and affirms national interests; that courageously confronts blackmail and pressure; that defends the democratic regime and the values of April to which it has made a unique contribution.

A Party where its elected representatives are a guarantee of work, honesty and competence; which does not confuse factors of dispersion with the real problems of the workers and the people; here is the PCP that consistently fights reactionary forces and conceptions and the right-wing policy that promotes them; which refuses lies and demagoguery; which defends and fights for peace; the Party that carries the project and the ideal of a new society free from capitalist exploitation, socialism.

Here we are, as always, building and affirming the PCP as an indispensable and irreplaceable force in the struggle for a Portugal with a future.

That’s who we are, that’s who we are and we will continue to respond to the challenges that lie ahead.

And there are many tasks ahead of us.

But as this magnificent rally shows, here there is strength and determination, here there is commitment and militancy, there is a project, there is strength, there is a dream and there is reason.

Let’s take all this and go forward with confidence, let’s carry out a major contact and mobilization campaign.

A big contact action that will be worth more for the conversations and clarifications we make than for the number of documents we distribute, an action where each one of us is a militant in the clarification and mobilization that is needed.

This extraordinary collective of men, women and young people, this collective work with this unique capacity.

Let’s move forward with confidence, determination and joy.

Anyone fighting for peace, anyone fighting to improve the living conditions of the workers and the people, can only be confident, can only be up in arms.

Let’s see the electoral battle as an opportunity to strengthen the Party and the mass struggle, which are decisive elements for the change in policies that the country needs.

The change that is needed on the 50th anniversary of April 25, making its achievements a reality every day and projecting its values into the future of Portugal.

Long live the CDU

Long live the JCP

Long live the PCP"