The President of the Republic said today, in front of hundreds of young people, that April 25 “left a lot to be done”, in education and health “for example”, so there is “a race against time”.
“April 25 left a lot undone. Some it did and some it didn’t. And the things it did do quickly became outdated. For example, education. There was an opening up of quantity in education. But did the quality keep up? No. Schooling took a long time to be extended. In health, the SNS [National Health Service] got off to a very good start, but then it expanded and expanded and began to have problems from decade to decade,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
In the year that marks the 50th anniversary of April 25, and in the first of three talks on the Carnation Revolution with young people that he announced he will have “soon”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said at the Rodrigues de Freitas School in Porto that there is “a race against time” given “the feeling that what is being done is not enough compared to what should be done”.
“Speaking of inequalities in the territory… The country before April 25 was very, very poor. Poverty was rapidly recovering in some centers, in the cities, in the metropolises, but less so in the countryside, border areas and some territories in the middle of the continent. In addition to the inequalities that existed, new inequalities were added,” he lamented.
With the new Minister of Education in the audience, in Fernando Alexandre’s first public act as governor, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa considered that “the country has made a lot of progress in digital”, but “it hasn’t reached everyone”.
“What consolation do we have? There is one thing that has never been lost: Freedom! During these 50 years, governments and parties have changed, new parties have appeared, parties have disappeared, opinions have changed, ideas have changed, movements have changed, but there is one thing that has been acquired forever: we don’t want to go back to a dictatorship. We don’t want a single party running the country,” he said.
Arguing that the countries with the highest environmental quality, as well as the most technically and scientifically advanced, live in a democracy, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that “today’s great wealth is to continue fighting for freedom, pluralism and change”.
The President of the Republic – who had planned to speak for 15 minutes and answer “half a dozen questions” for “maybe another hour” and ended up speaking for more than two hours and only interrupted the cycle of questions when some students asked to go to lunch – took the opportunity to leave a message to young people.
“It’s the young who will be decisive in the future of April 25. It was young captains who made April 25 happen, now it has to be young people who redo April 25 as many times as necessary,” he stressed.
Confronted by the students – who welcomed him in the pavilion with flags from various countries and to the sound of Zeca Afonso’s “Uma gaivota voava voava” and were the only ones who had the opportunity to ask the Head of State questions this morning – Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa addressed other topics such as the war in Europe or the role of the US elections in the future world balance.
“The American elections will be decisive and will have repercussions in Europe (…). It makes a difference whether Europe counts on the US or not. If it doesn’t, Europe faces a challenge (…) More investment in security or that means less investment elsewhere,” he said.
Invited to tell us how he experienced April 25, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who was working as a journalist for the newspaper Expresso in 1974, said that he heard from friends that a military movement was imminent and that it was going to be carried out by captains.
As for the exact date, he realized it on the day itself when, in the early hours of April 25, on his way home to take a shower after going to Restelo to watch a soccer match, he came across the limited column that was going to take control of the Portuguese Radio Club.
“I phoned key people like Francisco Sá Carneiro and others (…). At Expresso, a kind of central office was set up with antennas at the various points of operation. I spent part of the day at Expresso and in the intervals I could, I went out into the street,” he described.
After Porto, similar talks will follow in Lisbon and Santarém, Salgueiro Maia’s hometown.
Before the debate, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had the opportunity, accompanied by the school’s director, Henrique Almeida, to see the enrollment records and attendance certificates of the founder of the PSD and former prime minister, Sá Carneiro, as well as a 3D printer project that a group of students is developing, which aims to print monuments in three-dimensional format for people without sight.
As he passed into the pavilion, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa waved to the children who were in class and greeted him with a surprised “look at the President!”.
