PCP says ‘PS unlikely to be reliable’ at local level after Livre meeting

The PCP general secretary told Livre this Monday that “the PS can hardly be counted on” at the local level to combat right-wing policies, arguing that the CDU project has “the necessary answers” and is “open to contributions”.

Speaking to journalists at the end of the meeting, which took place today at the national headquarters of the PCP in Lisbon, the Communists’ general secretary, Paulo Raimundo, stressed that he had told Livre that the CDU has “an autonomous project, different from all the others, that it defends, theorizes and acts in practice,” for example in defense of public services or the preservation of water as a public good.

Stressing that it is precisely this “alternative programme of rupture” that local authorities need, Paulo Raimundo stated that this project cannot be implemented with the PS, given that the socialist management of local government is similar to that of the PSD.

“I don’t know if we have enough fingers on one hand to point out the differences in local governance between the PS and the SDP. Look at the main versions of the prehistory to understand that there are no serious differences,” the leader of the communists said, adding that “it is unlikely that we can count on the PS to react at the municipal level to fight right-wing politics.”

The PCP leader turned to the specific case of Lisbon to stress that the city does not need “an alternative to the PSD government, so that everything remains essentially the same.”

“What Lisbon needs is a de facto alternative, another city that responds to the people’s problems: this is impossible under the PSD municipal government, that is clear, but it is also impossible under the previous PS municipal government, given the evidence he has given. We are not going there with one or the other, neither for one nor for the other,” he said.

Asked whether the PCP could join a left-wing coalition in the Lisbon City Council that does not include the PS, Paulo Raimundo responded that the party believes that the HDZ project “contains the necessary answers,” although he acknowledges that “it is not free from evaluation, reformulation, improvement.”

“We will be the first to unite in order to respond to the problems of the population, for which the local democratic authorities are responsible. This is evidence: the lack of will on the part of the PCP and the CDU has never been connected with the lack of will on the part of the PCP and the CDU. is not a response to the problems of the population,” he said in a statement, in which he emphasized that the CDU project is “open to the participation of others.”

In turn, Livra parliamentary leader Isabel Mendes Lopez said that at the meeting with the PCP, the “importance of local authorities” was discussed and an agreement was reached that both parties would continue to “talk and find solutions, mainly programmatic ones for the whole country.”

Asked whether this meant that no door was closed to possible local understandings, the Livra MP replied: “The aim of this meeting was, first of all, to continue the conversation that has been going on for a long time, but above all, to deepen it.”

According to Isabel Mendez Lopez, today’s meeting with the PCP was mainly aimed at “analyzing the national political situation”, with consensus being reached on the need for the parties to focus “on the quality of life of the people”.

“This is done through – and this is a clear convergence – a more left-wing, progressive and ecological policy,” he said, stressing that Livre is in favour of finding “points of contact both at the programmatic level and in future configurations” with other parties.

Raimundo also stressed that today’s meeting was a “general conversation about general issues”, with “a very clear convergence of positions” on issues such as raising wages and pensions or access to health care and housing, as well as on the idea that the Constitution of the Republic should be a “structuring political element” to respond to the country’s problems.