Salute the struggle of the students of the Elementary and Secondary Education of November 5

(data: 5.11.2015)

The Portuguese Communist Youth, is in solidarity with the students and their just demands and welcomes all students who took to the streets by the 5th of November 2015. The students of Secondary Education took to the streets in several municipalities in the district of Lisbon , Porto, Coimbra, Santarém, Aveiro, Leiria, Évora, Braga Setúbal, Algarve, to claim their right to a public school, free of charge and quality.

In a context in which the beginning of the school year is marked by the deterioration of the material and human conditions in the schools of Basic and Secondary Education, the result of right policy practiced for years by the PS governments, PSD and CDS, based on funding cuts for the education. These funding cuts are an attack on our right to study and translate the growing lack of material conditions and in several schools with stops works, lack of heating in classrooms, equipment can not be used as a result of high costs maintenance. This lack of investment in public school is also reflected in the absence of employees, which means that in more and more schools services or are operating in a few hours or are privatized, as are examples of this are numerous cafeterias for schools north to south of the country.

While hundreds are students who today are forced to drop out of school because they can not afford the costs of education often and so many others who have to work in order to pay for their studies.

The expression of this day of fighting proves that students do not accept the continuation of the policy of destruction of public school practiced for years by governments PS, PSD, CDS.

The JCP also calls for unity of students and intensification of the struggle in schools and on the streets in defense of Public Education, Free and Quality, reaffirming that is the strengthening and intensification of the struggle of the students who will pave the way for the resolution of their problems and for fulfillment of their rights: the effectiveness of April School, as it is enshrined in the Portuguese Constitution.

 

Edgar Silva with youth

(data: 25.10.2015)

Edgar Silva, candidate for president, participated yesterday at a dinner organized by the JCP, which harshly criticized the “intervention” of Cavaco Silva and stressed that the country has an alternative.

The first words of Edgar Silva were of gratitude to so warm welcome and welcomed the sense of there this support, “support for all the battles, for the long journey that goes from here to the elections that take place in January.”

The Communist candidate for president spoke briefly of his journey of life before ‘reach this task “, referring to himself as a deep islet and recalling that it was a Catholic priest, as well as their participation in various intervention projects social, with street children in housing estates, ‘projects that had to do with values, with the defense of human rights, the defense of human dignity, “he said.

“But, however generous it may be our intervention, however well intentioned they may be the dedication to the construction of certain projects, there is a time when we are called to realize that, alone, unless we have a project deeper transformation social, if we have the strength of the organization to give material force to the depth of transformation that reality requires to be fairer, to be radically other, our intervention, however generous it may be, without this collective material strength turns out to be precarious and too fragile. ” He added, eliciting applause from the young people present: “. Our strength is the collective, not collective hardly worth our generosity and our will ‘

“Rights are never offered; for them “to fight, to win highlighted by enumerating then some of the great achievements enshrined in the Constitution, namely the labor level, and bringing to mind all the recent Constitutional Court decision on the conclusion of collective agreements in the public employer to assess the importance and the potential contained in the Constitution.

“The Constitution corresponds to a programmatic policy basis for ensuring for Portugal justice solutions, development and progress,” he said, adding that, as a fundamental law, “takes sides, has a state organization model, the values ​​of democracy of fundamental rights of every man and woman, for the sectors of the landlords of the regime, it is very difficult to digest. ” It is no coincidence that the right is equal to disfigure and change or that governments rule over their heads, “with the connivance of the President,” accused.

In this regard, Edgar Silva said that “we have never had in Portugal a President of the Republic who was deeply committed to the duty to respect and enforce the Constitution. And it’s time we had in Portugal a president who takes this fundamental commitment. ” “Do not just take in the Presidency someone who knows the Constitution from front to back and back to front. What you need to have at this point in Portugal is someone who takes the defense of this Constitution “- without mental reservations, he said.

“With this application we want to mobilize immediately the young to the idea that Portugal has an alternative,” said the Communist candidate, who does not accept the inevitabilities: “We are not condemned to be the most unjust and unequal country across Europe» ; «To this democracy marked by the vices of corruption, cronyism, inequality of citizens in access to law”; «To be this country that destroys its productive apparatus”; «To be a country in which, year after year, thousands of men and women are forced to seek their future in a foreign country, almost forced exile”; «To this situation in which Portugal is hostage to foreign interests and completely submissive to the interests of some loan sharks, some speculators, those who are interested in making Portugal a weak economy, subservient to the strongest economies of interests.”

The alternative to the situation that the country is experiencing is “an alternative of social justice, that the Constitution has all the conditions to give foundation and materialize,” said Edgar Silva near the end of his speech, even before enhance the role of young “in this battle, which goes far beyond the elections themselves.” “Your role will be decisive. This is our application. Let us mobilize all for a great result, so this battle brings new future possibilities for our country, “he said.

 

Solution, comply with the Constitution!

Youth

The Portuguese Constitution

Young people enjoy special protection so that their economic, social and cultural rights, namely:

  1. In education, vocational training and culture;

 

  1. Access to a first job,
  2. Work and social security;
  3. In access to housing;
  4. In physical education and sport;
  5. The use of leisure time.

 

Youth policy should have as its primary objectives the development of the personality of young people, creating conditions for their effective integration into working life, the taste for originality and a sense of community service.
On January 24, 2016 will take place the election of the next President. Edgar Silva’s candidate supported by the PCP, and truly committed to the defense of the Constitution, with the fight and the rights of workers and youth, as well as their interest and the country, with national sovereignty and democracy.

This application falls as one of its objectives a real and ambitious democracy, performed and fulfilled in its political, social, economic and cultural, and that the masses intervene in creative way in all aspects of life, seeing in their democratic participation the various levels of community life, and in defending the rights, freedoms and guarantees, constitutionally enshrined, a cornerstone of the reinforcement, rooting and deepening of the democratic system, which ensures the constant rise of the welfare of the people. This is an application that makes a clear option class. Commitment to the workers and the people. Commitment to April and to the defense of the Portuguese Constitution. Commitment to the struggle to transform Portugal. And these, for us, communists, for the PCP and the JCP are unshakable commitments.

Also of commitment to youth and the protection of his rights, in particular Article 70 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic on youth. Commitment to the goal of ensuring that youth happiness in their country in all aspects of his life – at work, in education, culture, health, housing, associations, sport, mobility and leisure.

This number of AGIT, we called that many young people – one graduated in History working to distribute advertising and has three job interviews scheduled, all to work abroad; a medical student participating in the Course Commission of their year; a student’s professional education that is forced to work in a call center to help at home; a student of Fine Arts chief of his Students’ Association; an electrician and a student of Secondary Education. – To make an inquiry to our candidate for president, Edgar Silva.

 

“The idea I have is that the Constitution has not been much respected, but also honestly do not know in depth and the ideas it contains. It gives much importance to CRP … Why? ”

Joana, 17, Professional Education student and working part-time in a call center

 

I give a lot of importance to our present constitution, among other reasons, because it was devoting the fundamental rights and duties of citizens and the state. Your question is even more interesting and timely you be a student-worker: do you think it would be easier or more difficult to achieve the constitutional right of access to public education, free and quality, if all of your colleagues had clear knowledge for example of Article 74, which defines the constitutional right of access to education? And another question you even leave: who is interested in more ignorance of the content of the Constitution, who want to follow and enforce or who interests you have not kept your oath?

 

“At this point in most of the new graduates have no job prospects. How I look at it and how to stop the output of the country’s young people? ”

Nuno, 27, advertising distributor

 

The problem that you place is perhaps the greatest challenge that the country faces. Speak suspended and destroyed lives, we speak of thousands of unemployed young workers facing the scourge of insecurity, forced to resort to internships, scholarships and other devices and thousands and thousands being forced to emigrate looking abroad solutions for their lives your own country denies them. This whole situation creates firstly a huge loss for each of these young people as well as an injury to his own country.

In that state of economic and social development would be the country if all the skills and knowledge of those thousands of young people were at the service of national production, were at the service of creating wealth? At what stage of development it would be, and as it should be, if cumpríssemos the Constitution and in particular the constitutional right to employment with rights?

 

 

“In my school, after the Directorate unsuccessfully trying to prevent the holding of a RGA (Student General Meeting) refused to justify the faults of the 220 students who attended. How safeguards the Constitution that our right and freedom? ”

Matilde, 16, student of Secondary Education

The example that you place is very serious and it is unfortunately not an isolated case. Faced with such a situation the solution is to resist. Rights only if they are implemented, if they are not are lost. What I can say very clearly is that the Constitution, whether the content and above all by the way was built on the streets, companies and also in schools and students, is completely against the events you describe.

 

Despite its seven revisions, the Constitution continues to make clear choices. The various forms of organization and assembly, as exemplified by the RGA are within the constitutional options and I have no doubt in saying that the school board’s attitude is deeply unconstitutional.

“Being studying medicine I have been having more direct contact with the difficulties of access of people to health … Since this is a fundamental right enshrined that you think can be done to ensure all people?”

Sara, 22, a medical student at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto

 

The fact that the question arises of a medical future with the concern of the defense and improvement of the national health service also helps to face the future health with hope.

Perhaps simplistically, I’d say enough comply with the Constitution and the access to that which is also, and very clearly, a constitutional right to the guarantee of access to health care is consecrated as a right for everyone and that the state has to ensure the conditions for the provision of health care and that it has tended to be free. Now, what we witness is quite the opposite, fewer public services, less valences and less public resources, more and more people who for financial reasons not go to the doctor, does not resort to health care, do not get the medicines you need. In a way, we are witnessing by unconstitutional policy options, the accelerated degradation of the quality of life of citizens, a situation that is no more severe due to the extraordinary commitment of doctors, nurses and support staff.

 

“In your opinion, what is the role that culture plays in the development of Portuguese society? What role does culture play in the PRC and in what way are these values ​​into practice today? ”

Gonzalo, 18, a student of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto

 

Portugal has almost 900 years of history, a small country but with very rich traditions and cultural roots and many different from region to region. A culture that develops every day and this development enriches the country. The Constitution of the Republic, following the April Revolution, enshrines democracy in its four strands, all of them inseparable. Political democracy, economic democracy, social democracy and cultural democracy. It does little good political democracy if the economy is not at the service of development of the country and most of the people; of little use to create wealth if it remains in the hands of a small handful of individuals; a country will never be truly democratic if its people are arredado access to education and training, if arredado access, cultural creation and enjoyment. This is to tell you that culture and its access is assumed by the Constitution as one of four structural aspects of democracy.

 

 

“Many people have the idea that the President does or can do much about the future of the country, but lately he found himself at last can … How cumpririas this role?”

Vasco, 25, electrician

The President has the powers that the Constitution gives it and that, contrary to what one might think, are meaningful powers, which both reveal themselves when they are exercised or when they are not exercised. Firstly, has the power to veto laws of Parliament and supervise them if the same prove to be unconstitutional, can the current President chose not to use even in clear situations of attack to the Constitution; It has the power, verifying certain conditions, to dissolve the National Assembly; It has the power of the word and the power and duty to intervene publicly on matters which he understands and understands when and foremost, the president has the most power and simultaneously an obligation to defend, respect and enforce the Constitution. This means that regardless of political convictions of each, those same convictions can not in any circumstances call into question the oath the President paid when taking over. Basically, the Constitution is the political program that the President is required and defines the powers for the President to defend, obey and enforce.

Again, young people will be asked to choose: either contribute to the Presidency of the Republic is someone who, as in the case of the current President, every day denies the constitution sworn to uphold, or elect a president who is not neutral, that is committed to the people and a clear political program: the Constitution – and that is for the protection and realization of this program that will use all the powers available to it.

 

 

For young communists time is it thickens this trust chain around the candidacy of Edgar Silva. Clarify and mobilize, saying the April values, defending the constitution, struggling with confidence for a Portugal with a future. A mass campaign, contact and involvement of youth. With its candidate, Edgar, but above all with the struggle that unites them. The enforcing April to pave the way for construction of the future to which we aspire.

 

See more about the application in edgarsilva2016.pt