The parliamentary leader of the CDS-PP rejected, this Thursday, “revisiting colonial legacies” and “duties of reparation”, considered that Portugal “did not change its regime to become an insolvent State” and highlighted the 25th of November.
Speaking at the solemn session marking the 50th anniversary of April 25, 1974, at the Assembly of the Republic, Paulo Núncio stated that the CDS-PP does not feel “the need to revisit colonial legacies”.
Criticism of Marcelo
“We do not want historical controversies or reparation duties that seem imported from other contexts outside the Portuguese-speaking framework”, he indicated.
“History is History, and our duty is the future, built and founded between sovereign states mirrored by the four continents without discrimination or prejudice between the northern and southern hemispheres, from the West to the East”, he defended.
On Tuesday, the President of the Republic recognized Portugal’s responsibilities for crimes committed during the colonial era and suggested paying reparations for past mistakes.
“At the CDS, we salute the exceptional capacity that Portugal and the new Portuguese-speaking states had, in just half a century, to reinvent their relationship, establish a new proximity and establish many good common interests. Lusophony is today an important dimension of all members of the CPLP, in the CDS we want to develop the Lusophone matrix that complements and adds to Portugal’s European dimension”, highlighted Paulo Núncio.
November 25th celebrations
In his speech, the centrist parliamentary leader also welcomed the creation by the PSD/CDS-PP Government of a commission to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 25th of November.
“In 2024 we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April. In 2025 we will finally celebrate, and not forget, the 50th anniversary of the 25th of November, remembering Fonte Luminosa, in Lisbon, and the democratic uprising that defeated extremism”, he pointed out.
Paulo Núncio considered that this was a “fundamental date for full freedom and democracy”, significant in the country’s history, and argued that the celebrations must be “fair, plural and national in scope, carried out with militants and civilians, from the institutions the schools”.
“Celebrating the 25th of April without forgetting the 25th of November is a matter of historical memory and a sense of gratitude. If with the 25th of April the Estado Novo fell, the 25th of November brought full democracy and freedom”, he highlighted.
“By celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April and the 25th of November, respectively in 2024 and 2025, we will be correcting this mistake that was made in the past and extending the celebrations of freedom for another year and a half. Through joint commemoration From these two dates, we will be, as a nation, restoring faith and hope in our late, young, and even fragile democracy”, defended Núncio.
April 25th “must be saluted” for overthrowing the Estado Novo
The centrist parliamentary leader said that the 25th of April “must be welcomed” for having overthrown the Estado Novo and for ending “a regime where there were no free elections, freedom of the press and where people were arrested for political reasons”. Núncio also highlighted that the Carnation Revolution, which took place 50 years ago, “allowed Portugal to approach and join Europe” and “put an end to the war in Africa, with high human costs and destroyed lives, but also families abandoned to their fate as a result of a disastrous process of decolonization”.
The leader also indicated that between the 25th of April and the 25th of November “the PREC, the Ongoing Revolutionary Process, took place, marked by nationalizations, occupations, sanitation, arrests for crimes of opinion, agrarian reform, the attempt to silence several parties by violence” and also “by the will to make revolutionary legitimacy prevail over democratic legitimacy”.
The CDS-PP deputy also stated that “Portugal did not change its regime to be an insolvent state”, nor to “be one of the comparatively poorest countries in Europe” and that “Portugal did not change its regime to have an emigration rate of youth in Europe and one of the highest in the world” nor to “promote assisted suicide and euthanasia”, highlighting “the new political cycle” with the PSD/CDS-PP Government.
With Lusa
