While it is certain that the new Secretary General of the PCP, like the previous one, will continue Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine, it is certain that he is now able to face the “military action” of the Putin regime .
Interviewed this Wednesday by Lusa – his first interview with a written media body – Paulo Raimundo consolidated the party’s official discourse on the war in Ukraine. That military action [da Rússia] it is reprehensible, first and foremost in the light of international law” – that is, “there is no doubt that there is a Russian military intervention in Ukraine”, which “we do not despise or relativize”. However, it is necessary to understand the context: “This has not started now, there are no very good and very bad here, there are shared responsibilities”.
Expanding on the argument underlining mitigating factors in Russia, Paulo Raimundo told a childhood story about a “completely absurd” game with his friends. “I have a childhood friend and at one point – six, seven year olds – he had a little dog. So the game that was set up – which was completely absurd – consisted of three kids who in turn teased the dog. when the dog came to bite they yelled and the dog poor thing got down… The game was like this this friend of mine who was the owner of the dog when it was his turn to make that move of poking the dog, the dog gave him about 20 bites. To the owner! And the question is: is the dog guilty? Is the dog guilty of this act?”
Be that as it may, he added, it makes no sense to compare the PCP’s current alignment with Moscow with that at the time of the Soviet Union: the PCP “has nothing to do with the Russian government”, “there is nothing that connects us with the Russian government, not distant, not even close”, “we have nothing to do with the class options of the Russian government” and “we fight these options daily”.
In the interview, Jerónimo de Sousa’s successor as secretary-general assumed that his professional experiences as a baker and carpenter before becoming a communist official (19 years old, now 46) were “short”: nine months in the carpentry shop and six months as a Carpenter. Baker.
“I usually say that for me there is no better economist in the world than my mother. We worked, me, my brother, my father, and at the end of the month we handed it over to my mother for her to manage.”
However, it was “very intense” experiences that, “connected to a concrete reality”, led to him being classified as a “worker” by the PCP: “If I had studied all my life, I wouldn’t be a worker,” he summed up. on. Then he added: “And there’s another element, which is the environment I grew up in. I don’t mean to be unfair in this context, but I’m pretty sure all my childhood friends and who I grew up with, none of them are the had the opportunity to go to university. Most of them didn’t even go to 9th grade”. He himself completed high school and if he could have received higher education, he would have chosen Fine Arts.
As an example of the social and economic context in which he lived in his youth, Paulo Raimundo describes: “I must receive in `tickets for meals I don’t even know if they still exist. It was a few titles and you could exchange them in a restaurant or a supermarket.” The family’s budget management was carried out by the mother: “I often say that for me there is no better economist in the world than my mother, we worked, I , my brother, my father, and at the end of the month we would hand it over to my mother for her to manage.
“It’s looking at people’s problems and paving the way for an alternative project. And for that you have to be in power, we’re not here, excuse the expression, cramming sausages.”
Realizing that, unlike Jerónimo de Sousa, he is not a specialist in popular sayings, he nevertheless recognized a tendency towards “popularuchas” expressions. For example, when he explains what motivates him in politics: “It is looking at people’s problems and paving the way for an alternative project. And for that you have to be in power, we are not here, excuse the expression, cramming sausages” .
“What good is a parish committee, which has its contingents up to date, sold “Avantes!”, but then overlooks the problems that people in that parish are experiencing?”
In the interview, Raimundo acknowledged “shortcomings” in the PCP’s organization. “We can’t keep waiting for someone to knock on our door,” he said, later giving an example: “We have party organizations that have everything done very well, with contributions up to date, everything done, but with a closure in the middle of where they are. Or, for example, what is the value of a parish committee, whose dues are up to date,”Further!“sold, but then you ignore the problems people in that parish are experiencing?”
And so “it is necessary to go further in the party organizations in the workplace”. With a rare self-critical frankness in the PCP, he concluded: “We found that we are not complying, doing what we have to do in what is a strategic matter for us, which is the connection with the workers.”
Source: DN
