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

The "fight is inevitable," announced the secretary general of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), Jerónimo de Sousa, following the meeting of the Central Committee of the training that analyzed the results in the municipal elections last Sunday. The PCP is a fundamental piece in the parliamentary majority of the left holding the Socialist government since 2015. Two years after that unpublished alliance, PCP has reaped the worst results in a municipal election, although Sousa's leader declares that the PCP "has not been weakened." The numbers bear the opposite: he lost 62,000 votes, one in 11, and 10 mayors, nine of whom went to the Socialist Party (PS). It collected 9.4% of the votes, 1.6 points less than in 2003. Although to the right, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) 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. The Communist of Sousa has announced that he will not support the mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, who is missing an alderman to govern with majority. Nor will it support in grieving cases such as the city of Almada, which lost the PCP after 43 years. "We won't block your government either," he clarified. The leader of the PCP, however, pointed out that the party "is not tied to any agreement" with the "minority government of the PS", although it did not say that it would break it. In the negotiation of the budgets for 2018, De Sousa recalled its demands: increase of the minimum wage of 600 euros in January, general increase of the salaries, increase of pensions and "the fair taxation of the capital", among others. The communist leader pointed out that parliamentary discussions do not prevent "the struggle from being 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 Socialist Party has not been able to" liberate the interests of monopoly capital ".