The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said this Thursday that “it is time to start a new cycle” in Portugal, 50 years after April 25, 1974, which protects democracy.
“50 years is time to start a new cycle,” declared Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, in the Sala dos Ambassadors of the Palace of Belém, in Lisbon, before the presidents of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Administrative Court , the Court of Auditors, Attorney General of the Republic and Ombudsman.
In a session in which he received Christmas greetings and heard messages and warnings from these heads of judicial authorities, the head of state defended that “justice should not be forgotten” in times of crisis and expressed concern about the challenges democracies face and growth of authoritarian regimes.
“Really this new cycle should be a cycle of the future, ambitious, as if we are starting over. This is how the period between now and 2024 and beyond 2024 should be seen. We have to start again”appealed.
According to the head of state, this is “a great demand” in the “difficult time” that Portugal is going through, because of the war in Ukraine and its consequences, in which one cannot “ignore that there are people who live worse”. nor “minimising what inflation means in people’s lives”.
“And that’s a big demand, it’s also a big demand in terms of justice, but it’s a big demand for all of us”continued, adding: “But we have to do it because if we don’t, they will start confusing the weaknesses in our democracy with democracy itself, and that would be very wrong.”
So said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa “Only those who have not lived in a dictatorship do not understand the difference between dictatorship and democracy” and emphasized that “in a dictatorship, representatives of the judiciary would never be able to say what they think on an equal footing”because they would be elected and dependent on the regime.
In his intervention, which lasted about twenty minutes, the president of the republic pointed to the “stains of poverty” and the “personal, professional, territorial or regional inequalities” that persist in Portugal as obstacles to justice.
Yet he stressed that in a dictatorship, “citizens did not have the rights and guarantees that they have, in spite of everything, all the shortcomings, all the problems, all the shortcomings”.
“It is little, it is very little, we want more, but we must not confuse what works poorly in democracy with democracy”strengthens.
That is what the head of state argued “there are no perfect dictatorships, because no dictatorship respects people’s dignity”and that “even a fragile democracy is always better”.
And that is the starting point for the new cycle, it has to be – with the current president, with future presidents, with the current composition of the Assembly, with future compositions, with the current government, with future governments, because the institutions must keep improving and innovating, and people pass by. We are all here at the service of something beyond us, and that’s called the Constitution, that’s called democracy”he concluded.
Halfway through his speech, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced that he would reward more April captains on Friday.
When the head of state asked to open a “new cycle” in Portugal 50 years after April 25, which will be completed in 2024, the head of state listed previous cycles of national life in this half-century: “We had the first cycle of confirmation on April 25, followed by the revolution, followed by the establishment of democratic institutions, followed by the sedimentation, consolidation of these institutions.”
Other cycles were those of “choice of European integration and formation of the Community of Lusophone Countries (CPLP)” and then “the transformations resulting from the new constitution, integration in Europe and the Lusophone world”🇧🇷
Source: DN
