BE and PCP agreed today to try to halt the constitutional revision process and to call for the recognition of the State of Palestine, after a meeting in which they promised to keep an “open door of dialogue” in opposition to the right.
Leaders of the BE and PCP met for around an hour today at the PCP’s national headquarters in Lisbon, as part of the round of meetings requested by the Bloc to the left-wing and environmental parties to discuss convergence in the opposition to the right.
At the end of the meeting, the BE’s coordinator, Mariana Mortágua, announced that the two parties had reached an agreement “to put the brakes on and definitively end the constitutional revision process”.
“It doesn’t make any sense to keep this constitutional revision process going in this scenario with a majority of MPs on the right, nothing good would come out of a constitutional revision process under these conditions,” he said, expressing the wish that this understanding “could be extended to all the opposition parties”.
The BE leader also pointed out that at the meeting – which she said was her first with Paulo Raimundo as secretary-general of the PCP – there was also “enormous convergence on the issue of Palestine”.
“We want it to be a central issue, given the massacre and genocide and the need to affirm self-determination and the recognition of the State of Palestine, something that has not yet been done in Portugal by the Portuguese state,” he said.
Alongside these two issues, Mariana Mortágua stressed that the two parties converged on the need to reject the right-wing program and to make “a strong opposition” to the AD government. However, she did not commit to approving the motion of rejection announced by the PCP, stressing that the BE will reserve its assessment after reading the document.
The BE leader also said that the two parties have “common diagnoses” and converge on “very important issues, ranging from labor rights and work to housing”, pledging to maintain “open bridges of dialogue and the capacity for dialogue to face these times ahead”.
“And also to have a big mobilization on April 25 and May 1. These will be the first moments of popular mobilization and response to the election results and also to the right-wing government,” he stressed.
For his part, the leader of the PCP, Paulo Raimundo, said that during the meeting, his party agreed with the BE “on aspects of the analysis of results” and also on the fact that we are now facing “a very demanding situation”, partly caused by the PS government, and to which a right-wing executive will not respond.
“All the problems that existed on March 9 are there: the problem of wages, pensions, housing, the SNS, the response to the rights of parents and children. All of this was and is there to be answered and we have no illusions that this answer will not come at the hands of a PSD/CDS government,” he said.
For the PCP secretary-general, this executive “will only bring more dismantling of public services, more attacks on the democratic system and on wages, regardless of this or that one-off measure that may now be tried to be fudged in this woolly-footed entry”.
“What we’ve said is that, for our part, the workers, the people, everyone can count on being at the forefront of the fight against this policy and objectives, and using all the means and instruments that are at our disposal, both institutionally and outside the institutions,” he said, promising street protests.
