‘We helped save the country from the right’: Katharina Martins leaves BE leadership with a critical and emotional speech

This Saturday Katarina Martins delivered her last speech as coordinator of the Left Bloc (BE), recalling the goals achieved by the party, the former leaders and criticizing the PS.

Katarina Martins, who received applause, stated that in BE “generations don’t succeed or replace each other, they add up”, recalling the various leaders who have passed through the party.

“I am well aware that camaraderie, conviction, frank debate, shoulder-to-shoulder fighting are not celebrated. They are common, but let me tell you today how grateful I am for the privilege of walking with you in these last 11 days. travel, years and what will come,” said Katarina Martins in her last speech as BE Coordinator.

“We helped save the country from the right”

“We helped save the country from the right,” he stressed, noting the agreements reached during the “invention” and the work of the party.

The BE coordinator also called the PS “the stepfather of all populism”, believing that the country’s structural problems were exacerbated by the fact that the socialists believed that with an absolute majority, their “moment of kavakista” had come.

For the still coordinator of the BE PS, Antonio Costa might “suffer” but made it clear that “it was not the covid and the war that created the current difficulties” and “no opposition has created any of the problems the ministers are inventing.”

“And thus the degradation of public life is entertained, in which PS has become the stepfather of all populism,” he accused.

Katharina Martins defended that the party “did what it had to do and will return” to vote against the 2022 state budget, noting that the blockers do not regret “consistency”.

“We do not regret permanence”

The BE coordinator stated that “these are difficult times”, stressing that she does not mean the party, although she acknowledged that “last year’s electoral defeat left wounds”.

However, he assured: “We do not regret coherence.”

“Let no one be mistaken about who we are and what we are: we respect those who voted for the Bloc and who, out of fear of the right or preferring an absolute majority, supported the PS a year ago; but we will always do as we are told to choose between party convenience and the care that democracy owes to the SNS, or the right of those who work,” he said.

Katarina Martins assured that BE chooses and will continue to choose “consistency and commitment to solutions that save lives, help the sick, ensure the poor and the rich don’t have to be cared for in our public hospitals.” thus different from the most powerful man in the world.”

“And if we do it, it is because we always respect our mandate. We have obligations to the people and that is why we are the credible left,” he added.

applauded goodbye

Katarina Martins noted that it is precisely on the cohesion of the party that “growth is based”, she said that she already felt herself on the street, “and even polls already recognize this”.

“If we are now recuperating, it is because we are serious about the country and serious about the obligations of those who trusted us. We don’t give in to blackmail, and I don’t need to tell you how important this is to the people. so that there is such confidence that people are here, which does not bend or break,” he stressed.

In the farewell speech of the BS leader, which ended with a five-minute standing ovation by the delegates of the 13th blocist National Congress, Katarina Martins pointed to the absolute majority, accusing the PS of using the “state apparatus”, entangling “in internal wars”, while Portugal “watches with distrust paralyzed and confused in its own mistakes by the government.