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Honourable Speaker
Honourable Prime Minister
Honourable Members of Parliament
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Throughout the years, this Chamber has met in ceremonial session to celebrate the anniversary of April 25. This ceremony has been repeated, year upon year, with no great fundamental change.

I believe the time has now arrived to ask ourselves a few questions. Repeated so often in the same manner, what does really remain of the celebration of April 25? Does it continue to make sense repeating this celebration of the Day of Freedom, or is it time to start innovating?

Such doubts brought about another query: aren’t the commemorative celebrations of April 25 becoming a ritual which has very little left to tell our fellow citizens?

My greater concern is the sense that this Day of Freedom has for the younger generations, for those who were born after 1974. Theirs is the future of Portugal. What will this ceremonial tell the younger generations? This is a question which I must place before the Honourable Members of the Portuguese Parliament.

April 25 is not the festival of one generation, but a moment with which all the Portuguese must be challenged. We, meeting here today, are not the owners of the revolution, neither the trustees of democracy.

What this date and the democratic regime have in special is the fact it is not anybody’s exclusivity, but a common heritage of the whole of Portugal. Nobody owns April 25. History belongs to all, even to those who did not live it.

I ask myself, Members of Parliament, if we should not modernize the remembrance of April 25, 1974, thinking mainly of those who were not there to feel that day’s emotions.

For the younger people, freedom has a different meaning than what it signifies for many of those attending this ceremony. It could even be stated that in Portuguese society there are two co-existing ways of sensing freedom. On the one side, the freedom of those who conquered and fought for it; on the other, the freedom of those who have it as a natural gift of life, such as the air they breathe.

We cannot forget that there was a time when that air was not breathable in Portugal. There was a time when the nonconformity of young soldiers was necessary so that the “clean and complete day” of Sophia’s poem was finally born. Freedom is also memory. And, such as memory, it deserves to be celebrated.

Nowadays the best homage we can pay April 25 is to celebrate in it an inspiring vision of active freedom. We cannot continue stuck solely to an idea of freedom as a memory, whilst losing sight of the idea, which motivates and energizes freedom as a project. A never ending and many sided project, open to many different interpretations, dissatisfied with itself. On this day we must celebrate the freedom built from nonconformity and ambitioning a better future.

Freedom is more than an end in itself; it is also a means for us to make what we want of it, always respecting the freedom of others. Exactly because we are free, we can use our freedom to obtain personal fulfilment in an open and democratic society.

Being free is a condition, not a result. A presupposition, not finality. One is not just free. One is free to think and act, to achieve something. Free to do what freedom allows us, in our personal lives, in the profession we chose, in the projects we hoped to carry out, in the Country we dreamed of and wish to build. It is from active freedom that democratic pluralism arises, a pluralism that is mirrored in this House. I salute you with great esteem, Honourable Members, legitimate representatives of the pluralism of the Portuguese Nation.


Mr. Speaker
Members of Parliament,

April 25, 1974 was, more than anything else, a gesture of nonconformity and of non-acquiescence. The worst way to celebrate it is to commodiously accept that the erosion of time will transform April 25 into a simple ephemeron, a public holiday which, year upon year, the Portuguese enjoy with the indifference of old habits.

I believe there is a better way to remember this day. We have to celebrate it with exactly the same nonconformity that, in 1974, made freedom possible. We must celebrate April 25 knowing that the Portuguese did not resign themselves to live in a regime without freedom and that, during the course of the revolutionary process, were intransigently on the side of democracy, against all and any types of oppression. Nobody gave us freedom. We are free because we wanted it.

Nonconformism is the stamp of youth. I thus want, in this Day of Freedom, to address the new generations and appeal, in simple words: do not accept resignation!

In this first year as President of the Republic, I have found numerous success stories in the midst of Portugal’s young people.

Over the whole Country, from North to South, I contacted with young scientists and researchers who are developing projects that place Portugal on the front line.

I met dynamic entrepreneurs who understood the demands of the global market, who dared to risk and did not allow themselves to be vanquished by the pessimism that corrodes wills and destroys vocations.

I congregated with a new generation of young artists and sports persons that stride the path of success.

I was struck by numerous examples, some of them particularly stirring, of young people who take part in voluntary work, giving their time to serve those in need. Young people know, better than anyone else, the true sense of words such as «excellence», «innovation» or «social inclusiveness».

I am proud of the young people of my Country. I reject the idea that the younger generations may have reduced skills, greater deficiencies in training, less sense of duty and responsibility, less altruism and little regard for others’ needs. This is not what I have found in either the interior or in the coastal areas of the Country, either in the Portuguese communities spread around the world or in the military forces in missions abroad.

My experiences in these respects are valid reasons to be hopeful.

I trust in the future of Portugal because I trust Portuguese youth.

What I see and find all over the Country has led me to think about ourselves, the generation that lived April 25. Have we really been up to the mark of the ambition of our young people? Have we known how to nourish the hope which was born thirty three years ago?

We cannot ignore that there are signs which elicit concern. There are a number of perplexing situations and doubts which deserve joint reasoning, to which I summon the Portuguese in this Day of Freedom.

Young people, as I mentioned, have revealed potential which creates hope and trust in the future. But what values are we transmitting to them? What have we done so that the new generations continue to believe in their Country? What conditions have we created for the young people, especially the better qualified, to remain in Portugal and not leave for other destinations? Are we doing all in our power to guarantee the sustainability of our model of a welfare State? How will we ensure in the future justice and fairness between generations? What environment and natural resources are we leaving our children?

If it is a fact that there is an unquestionable dynamism among the young, in their openness to the World, in the use of new technologies, in acquiring skills and knowledge, the same cannot be said as to their participation and interest in public life.

We must recognize that we have been unable to motivate the young for a more active and participating involvement in politics. I am well aware that this is not exclusive to Portugal, but rather a common trend in the consolidated democracies of post-industrial societies. But the fact that the lack of civic interest is common to other countries should not be a comfort to us.

On the contrary, because I have the ambition for a better Country, I consider that we cannot accommodate ourselves. I shall not become resigned or conform in the fight for the quality of Portuguese democracy. We have to leave our children and grandchildren a regime in which we are governed by a qualified political class, in which public life is measured by rigorous ethical, demanding and skilled criteria, in which corruption is combated by an effective and prestigious judicial system.

After more than thirty years over the fall of an authoritarian regime, Portugal must feel it is a mature democracy. A democracy in which the scrutiny of the powers that be is ensured by an exempt and responsible media.

It is urgent to reinvent the spirit of citizenship, which demands a change in our political culture. Each one must contribute with his example so that the young become aware that an effort exists to improve the quality of our democracy.

It is necessary that politicians endeavour to render account to the People and that the Portuguese know and understand the sense and the aims of the measures which are being taken, that there is clarity and transparency in the relationship between the political powers and the civic community.

It is necessary that there is a clear separation between political and private activities, that situations of conflict of interests be removed due to ethical demand and not just because of legal imposition.

Without prejudice to the natural differences in ideas and opinions, the several parties, instead of stopping at what divides them, should join efforts and work in common, thinking of Portugal and of the Portuguese before anything else. Only this way can we conquer the interest of the new generations in political activity.

Above all, we must bequeath to the young the idea that democracy is a moral code and a sense of collective identity. The new generations must see Portugal as a community that has a particular destination in a global world.

The young have to review themselves in their Country – in the Country they have and in the Country of their ambition. For this purpose it is fundamental that the new generations know how we got here, the much that we achieved to get here, and that where we are now will always be the departure line for new destinations.

Portugal has centuries of History, which makes us different and identifies us. We have left markers all over the World. We speak a language which is shared by millions of human beings. We have a material and immaterial heritage which we are duty bound to preserve and bequeath to future generations. It is around the defence of that heritage and of that culture of many centuries that, without nostalgias or past feelings of any kind, a new patriotic sense must be construed.


Mr. Speaker
Members of Parliament,

I end, renewing my appeal to the young Portuguese: do not conform!

Precisely one month ago, on March 25, the European Youth Forum issued the Rome Declaration with a very expressive ending: «Listen to what we have to say, ask us what we need, and then, act! ».

This is the message with which youth challenges Europe and its heads. Politics, nowadays, are inconceivable without the contribution of the younger generations. For this reason I have endeavoured to listen to young people during the «routes» which I launched, in this Chamber, one year past. From all I receive signals of incentive and hope.

It is time to act. We live a decisive year to carry out fundamental reforms in the essential domains of our collective life. Future cannot be postponed.

For this reason I appeal to the young, on this anniversary of April 25. With the freedom they have available, they will go where ambition will take them. Of those who were born and bred in democracy, we can only expect the very best. Now, everything depends upon you and your nonconformism. In the name of Portugal, do not accept resignation!