The Portuguese PC after its municipal defeat: "The fight in the street is inevitable"

The "fight is inevitable," announced the secretary general of the PCP, Jerónimo de Sousa, following the meeting of the party's Central committee that analyzed the results in the party's municipal elections. The PC is a fundamental piece in the parliamentary majority of lefts that holds the Socialist government since 1975. Two years after that unpublished alliance, the PC has reaped the worst results in municipal elections. Although De Sousa, declares that the PC "has not been weakened." The numbers bear the opposite: it lost 62,000 votes, one in 11, and 10 mayors, nine of which went to the PS. It collected 9.4% of the votes, 1.6 points less than in 2003. Although on the right, the PSD leader has resigned for losing 3,000 votes, in the case of the PCP there is no relief in the direction. The first consequence of this debacle is that the parliamentary agreement with the PS will not be repeated in the mayors ' offices. De Sousa has announced that he will not support the mayor of Lisbon, who is missing an alderman to govern with majority. Nor will it support in suffering cases like the city of Almada, which lost the PC after 43 years. "We won't block your government either," he clarified. The leader of the PC, however, pointed out that the party "is not tied to any agreement" with the "minority government of the PS", but also did not say that it was going to break it. In the negotiation of the budgets for 2018, De Sousa recalled his demands: increase of the minimum wage of 600 euros already in January, general increase of the salaries, increase of pensions and "the fair taxation of the capital", among others. De Sousa pointed out that the parliamentary discussions do not prevent "the struggle to be felt in the street." It's inevitable. "It was always the workers ' struggle that gave solutions to their problems." The central committee has scheduled for the last weekend of the month a "National Day of information and contact with workers and the population" in which they will count "the advances and measures necessary to go further in the defense, replacement and conquest of Rights ", because the PS has not been able to" liberate the interests of monopoly capital ".