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We celebrate today one of the most emblematic days of our lives.

In each individual’s personal life there will surely be other dates that are specially recalled. But none other evokes our collective memory as that of 25 April 1974.

We are meeting here, on this day, before an assembly of the people’s elected representatives, because democracy was granted us by the 25th April.

All over the Country the people are celebrating this date because the 25th April brought us freedom.

We can publicly state our beliefs, we can meet and demonstrate, because the 25th April brought us the fundamental rights.

When celebrating the 40th anniversary of April 25, we must recall what it was to live in a regime where freedom did not exist, in which the members of government were not elected by the people, in which the people could not voice their views.

Looking towards the new generations, we have the civic duty to disseminate the memory of the dictatorship. The young people of our time, those who are under 40 years of age, did not live the 25th April. They are unaware of the experience of living under an authoritarian regime, which was ended by the 25th April due to the decisive action of a handful of brave members of the military.

On this day we must address a special salute to the Armed Forces who, in the decisive moments of our History, always knew how to be at the service of Portugal and the Portuguese.

With the passing of the years, the number of those who always lived in freedom will always be increasing. This is how it should be, it is a sign that democracy will endure and is deeply rooted in the day-to-day lives of the new generations, to whom life under dictatorship is as distant as it is unconceivable.

It is legitimate to challenge the options taken throughout these forty years. However, we have to mind a very simple reality: we are only able to challenge and criticize such options because we live in freedom and in democracy. Democracy is not just the best of regimes. Democracy is the sole regime that safeguards the fundamental rights of the human being. And, in a democratic regime, there is only one criterion to define the legitimacy of the people that govern us: the votes expressed in the ballots. That is what distinguishes democracy from a dictatorship. This was what Portugal conquered forty years ago.

Madam Speaker,
Members of Parliament,

For our current young people to understand the significance of the 25th April it is necessary that they are aware of the paths we have stridden in the last four decades.

We established democracy and approved a Founding Law, the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. Within a very difficult context, with the country going through the imminence of serious confrontations amongst the civil population, the democratic forces won the battle for freedom and for a constitutional democracy.

We successfully integrated the many thousands of Portuguese arriving from the African territories that had achieved independence. Without traumas or complexes, we built with those new countries a fraternal alliance that asserts the value of spoken Portuguese in the whole world.

In the last few decades extraordinary advances were achieved at social levels, which must be preserved for the future generations.

Portugal was able to reduce, without parallel, the infant mortality rate, which nowadays is one of the lowest in Western Europe.

Life expectation of the Portuguese significantly increased. We now expect to live, on an average basis, 15 years more than in 1960.

We set up a National Health Service that, through a very significant public investment, guarantees all Portuguese access to health care.

Progress is equally notable in the field of Education: in the pre-primary sector we grew, from 41,000 children matriculated in 1974 to more than 270,000, in 2012. In higher education the number of students increased fivefold between those two dates. In 1970, those that had completed higher education represented little more than 0.5% of the resident population whilst, in line with data from the last Census, this proportion is in excess of 12%. In 1970, one quarter of the population were illiterate, a slur that particularly affected women. Forty years later, the rate of illiteracy is just slightly in excess of 5%.

Women achieved rights of equality status and nowadays hold a predominant placing in the higher levels of education and in the labour market.

At the beginning of the eighties a motorway didn’t even exist connecting Lisbon with Porto. Currently we are able to travel in the whole Country using motorways, from the Algarve to the border with Galicia. Portugal is a country endowed with a vast network of physical, cultural and sports infrastructure, very often built by another of April’s great conquests: the power of the local authorities.

We travelled a long way to arrive at these times, to a free and democratic Portugal, to a more developed country, where the expectations of well being are similar to those of the remaining States in the European Union.

However, if the levels of well being are greatly superior to what they were in 1974, if the Portuguese live today incomparably better than forty years ago, the truth is that we still have a long path to run to approach the average of the social indicators of Europe’s more developed countries.

In spite of the path we have completed, we continue dissatisfied. And this is a welcoming factor. It is a sign that we are not resigning, that our ambitions are to live in a better country, where our children and grandchildren may enjoy better levels of well being.

Members of Parliament,

Portugal faces nowadays great challenges as to its future, challenges that do not end in the budgetary dimension,

The decrease in birth-rate and the progressive aging of the population place us fronting diverse issues and undisputable gravity, from the potential non-sustainability of the systems of social protection to the intenseness of dramatic situations of exclusion and loneliness.

It is also fitting, in this picture, to dedicate special attention to the effects of unemployment on the Portuguese social fabric. The serious risk exists of long range unemployment, especially when it affects Portuguese with ages in excess of 45 and threatens their return to the labour market, placing at issue some of the fundamental bases of our society. Amongst these the family is an outstanding feature, including the informal protection network that it provides, and the so called middle classes, the mainstay of modern social structures.

Combating unemployment must be a priority of political activity.

On another hand, several signs point out an increase in asymmetries that may place at issue the country’s cohesion, such as the inequalities in the distribution of incomes, the situations of poverty, the desertification of several parts of the territory or the pronounced dissimilitude between the coastline and the interior.

We must also hold present, very particularly, the situation of pensioners, of those that, after a life’s work, have suddenly been faced with situations that threaten their legitimate rights to a dignified existence.

It is the politician’s duty to be conscious of these challenges and to point out a path of hope to the Portuguese.

We have potentialities available that we have not exploited as we should, be it in the economy of the sea, be it in the rational use of the forest, be it, ultimately, in the valuation of its cultural and historic heritage.

Above everything else, Portugal has an asset that cannot go to waste: its young people. The new generations have available talents and knowledge such as no other generation had in the past. We have young researchers and scientists whose merit is internationally recognized. A very significant public investment was made in the qualifications of our young people. A country’s scientific policy and the innovation and competitiveness that derive from this stake are decisive for the future.

The valuation of our human capital also implies a fresh look upon the Diaspora, since it is a strategic asset of Portugal in the World. Through substantial actions we have to set up networks and strengthen the bonds with the Portuguese and Luso-descendant communities. These communities have shown me, in multiple encounters, their interest in contributing towards the Country’s development.

We must value human capital, equally, in what respects to the State itself. It is legitimate, and possibly urgent, to develop a reform of the Public Administration. However, reforming the Administration does not mean to weaken it in one of its essential features: the quality of its human resources. On the contrary, only through a strengthening of the qualifications of public servants and the fair compensation of their merit will we be able to bring prestige to the exercise of public office and guarantee that the Administration works efficiently, impartially and independently, free from the pressure of private interests and of political cronyism.

Equally important is that fighting corruption is taken up as a priority, and that public interest is always placed above private interests. However, fighting corruption cannot be carried out through populist actions, through accusations that disrespect fundamental principles of our legal system, such as the presumption of innocence, investigative secrecy or the right to one’s reputation. Those that tread the path of demagogy maybe have an ephemeral popularity, but will never be able to effectively combat corruption. On the contrary, they contribute to discrediting the serious initiatives to avoid it and the ongoing investigations to fight it.

In Portuguese public life, the frequency with which essential values, such as rigour and integrity, are placed in question is increasingly worrying, as is the case with the civility that should rule democratic life amongst those that have diverging ideas and opinions.

Disadvantaging an analysis of the real issues facing the Portuguese and a deep study of the matters that are essential to our future, privilege is being given to insult and defamation, to inconsequence and superficiality. Should it persist, this trend will lead to a progressive distancing of the citizens, especially the younger, with respect to political activity. As such, the necessary and healthy civic scrutiny of the institutions and of the actions of the holders of political office could become substantial and dangerously diminished.

The media have a decisive role to perform and must be aware of the responsibility deriving from their influence on public opinion.

The media must inform and clarify the people objectively and rigorously, providing the means for confrontation over free, but properly based opinions. On the day when true and rigorous information are totally sacrificed privileging the impact of sensationalism, we will be, after all, creating new forms of dictatorship.

When celebrating the 40 years of the 25th April we can state that Portugal is nowadays a consolidated democracy, a State based on the Rule of Law where civil liberties are respected.

However, and this has been proven by several opinion polls, a growing dissatisfaction exists with the functioning of our political system. Political parties must tranquilly, but urgently, reflect upon the causes of this discontentment.

As I have mentioned, the trend, amongst others, has worsened to privilege the accessory or the ephemeral disadvantaging the essential. Political parties have unmistakably to understand, sooner or later, that dissatisfaction with the political system and the citizen’s lack of interest will tail off by affecting the party political activity in itself.

Democracy is not in danger but, 40 years since the 25th April, it is time that the political parties rethink the sense of their actions and assume their responsibility in construing Portugal’s Future.

Members of Parliament,

The 25th April took place forty years ago, but its ideals continue alive. The fight for a free and democratic Portugal, for a more developed country, is a bond amongst the Portuguese.

Nobody owns the 25th April neither can it be used as an assault weapon in political fighting. The ideals of opening democratic dialogue which inspired the regime we established forty years ago are still fully valid in today’s Portugal.

The 25th April was not aimed at dividing the Portuguese, but to unite them around a common objective.

Without prejudice to the natural difference of opinions and confrontation of ideas that is normal in a democracy, the challenges that Portugal is currently facing are of such a size that they cannot be at the mercy of political practices where resentment and conflict prevail.

Facing the dimension of these challenges, which are not placed directly before a party or a government, but to the whole of Portugal, we have to choose a decisive option: we either persist in a short term view, gazing at what divides us, or think over Portugal in a perspective for the future, starting from what links us together.

Our fight is not any smaller than that of those who carried out the 25th April. With freedom conquered and democracy consolidated, now is the time to fight for a more developed and fairer country.

Portugal will only become a fairer country if it achieves greater development. And Portugal will only achieve greater development if a collective effort exists to reach a commitment for the future as to the superior national objectives.

It is time to do away with short sighted policies, dictated by tactics and immediate interests.

We require a discourse of hope that musters the Portuguese for the challenges that face us.

We need motivated professors, researchers with drive, valued public servants, creative artists, enterprising youths, a community of entrepreneurs and workers with a vanquishing spirit.

Viewing a retrospective history of the past four decades, we can easily conclude that we were only capable to approach the April idealism when we were able to come together for essential options.

We united against the threat of new totalitarianisms, in difficult times when this Parliament was surrounded and its Members unduly held.

We united when we were able to approve a Constitution that is the founding matrix of our democratic regime and of the Rule of Law.

We united when we adhered to the European Communities and became a Member State that obtained the respect of its counterparts through its dynamism when we more than once assumed the Union’s presidency.

Whenever we were united we were always nearer to the ideals of April.

It is not by chance that the spirit of commitment and understanding amongst the different political forces is at the root of the rules of the democratic system consecrated in our Constitution.

It is not the case of confounding the opening to compromise with unanimity of points of view, neither rendering ineffective the alternating dynamics that are proper to democracy.

For this reason it is difficult to understand that in a consolidated democracy responsible politicians fail to reach understandings over issues essential for our collective future. We have to believe that obstacles will end up by being overcome.

Madam Speaker,
Members of Parliament,

We are living an historic date, when Portugal celebrates the 40 years of the 25th April.

We must celebrate the past with a sense of the future. Only thus will we deserve the present in which we live. The present demands from us the same bravery with which, 40 years ago, we built together a free and democratic Portugal.

Thank you very much.