In her last speech as coordinator of the Bloco de Esquerda, Catarina Martins received a standing ovation and began by thanking everyone who was involved in the process of organizing the XIII Convention.
“I am well aware that camaraderie, conviction, frank debate, shoulder-to-shoulder struggle are not celebrated. They share. But allow me today to tell you how grateful I am for the privilege of walking with you on this path these past 11 years and for what is to come,” he said.
There was also time to say a word to Francisco Louça for his “combativeness and dedication” and for the “generosity” in the way he was “always” present. “And that was Francisco, like Luís Fazenda and Fernando Rosas. In different ways, they reinvented their intervention in the Block and taught us that generations do not run over or replace one another, they add to each other”, he says.
Catarina Martins also did not forget Miguel Portas, calling him “the right piece of advice to avoid wasting time on the unnecessary at all costs so as not to lose sight of the fundamentals” and João Semedo, with a special word for the approval of the medically assisted law, known as the “João Semedo Law”.
Recalling other times, Catarina Martins looked at the height of the ‘contraption’, stating that “we helped to save the country from the right and we never submitted to the pilgrim idea that a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ would suffice for a compromise of measures: you have to there must be honor and fidelity to agreements in politics, but the people have the right to know what will be done, when and how, and that is a transparent agreement for everyone to know.” Catarina Martins guaranteed that the party is “unitary against sectarianism” and promises that “it will never cease to be”. “We want all the strength of the left together, because it is not too much to face the oligarchic caste that rules in Portugal.”, She stated.
Already in the most recent elections, where the results of the Bloco de Esquerda fell short of expectations, Catarina Martins admitted that the defeat left wounds, but she does not let herself be defeated by it. The former coordinator stated that “we did what we had to do and we would again do the same confrontation with the government in the Budgets regarding health and labor rights.”
He also assured that those who voted for the Bloc were not defrauded and underlined that “corência” is “founded the growth that we already feel in the street and that even the polls already recognize. We don’t give in to blackmail and I don’t need to tell you how important it is for the people to have this certainty that here are people who neither bend nor break.”
And he went on, in an attack on the prime minister: “António Costa refused any agreement on the left in 2019 to two years later provoke a political crisis and have an absolute majority. It was a ruse that won. And now he doesn’t know what to do with his victory and is consumed by the worst of all situations: the government does little and has no excuses, it asked for all the power of an absolute majority and in a year and a half it shattered the confidence of a good part of of their voters”, criticizes.
Catarina Martins also said that “the absolute majority of the PS is everything that could be expected from an absolute majority”, stressing that “it uses the State apparatus and loses itself in internal wars and Portugal watches in disbelief a Government paralyzed and entangled in the their own mistakes”.
