PCP warns ‘democracy is under threat’ due to fascism and lack of exercise of rights

The PKP warned on Tuesday that “democracy is under threat” due to fascism and lack of exercise of rights, and believes the government cannot celebrate April 25 by allowing “deterioration of living conditions”.

Speaking at a solemn commemorative meeting on the 49th anniversary of April 25 in parliament, PKP MP Manuel Loff considered that the Carnation Revolution “has produced one of the most daring democracies in the world.”

“Almost half a century after April 25 and the best hopes of millions of Portuguese, millions of democrats around the world who believed that our revolution was theirs, democracy is under threat,” Manuel Loff warned at the session.

According to the PKP MP, this threat to democracy arises “everywhere, starting with Portugal”, where “the most just natural expectations of those who expect that democracy will always be accompanied by well-being and social justice are not justified.” , the right to health, education, housing, work with rights and guarantees, a happy childhood or old age with dignity and quality of life.

“Whenever any or all of these rights do not materialize in our lives, disbelief in democracy is fueled and will always be a threat,” he said.

When members of the government listened to him, Manuel Loff bluntly criticized the executive branch, emphasizing that those with executive power could not “celebrate April 25, revolution and democracy, and at the same time allow the conditions of the Portuguese to worsen.”

Those in executive power cannot celebrate on April 25 “after countless public resources have been buried in support of large economic and financial groups or in seizing money from the state, from all of us, to achieve the so-called ‘certain accounts’, then the same thing that will never be right without the proper functioning of public services that democracy is made for all of us on a daily basis,” he added.

However, the PKP deputy emphasized that “fascism” also poses a threat to democracy, adding that it is “illusory” to judge that “an attack on power by the fascist extreme right leaves democracy unscathed.”

“Therefore, it is important that when democracy and freedom are glorified, the significance of this threat is not devalued, lies, manipulation, racism, whitewashing of crimes and fascist and colonial violence of the past, brazen opportunism, by pretense, to defend today what has always been rejected in the past,” he stressed. he, receiving applause from the PKP and BS benches.

At this point, Manuel Loff referred to the situation in Brazil, hailing the “Brazilian Democrats”, including current President Luiz Inácio “Lulu” da Silva, for their struggle to “victory what was the greatest, absolutely real threat to democracy since end of the military-civilian dictatorship”.

Addressing directly the Portuguese citizens and those who are building their future in Portugal, the PKP deputy emphasized that April 25 was carried out by “generations of resistance, and first of all by the communists” who gave “the best of themselves, and often their lives.” themselves” to achieve “freedom, rights, a just society”.

“April 25 must now continue to be done by us, those who believe in these values ​​that remain, we know this today better than ever, the solution to the structural problems of our country,” he stressed.

Manuel Loff stressed that “the crowds that take to the streets these days” do so “with the inexhaustible force of the April values” and reminding “that there is no democracy without social justice.”

“Grandola Zeki Afonso, the ‘land of brotherhood’ where ‘the people who own the most’ should be each of our towns and villages in a truly democratic country,” he concluded.