Partido Comunista Português
| Partido Comunista Português | |
|---|---|
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| Secretary General | Jerónimo de Sousa |
| founding | March 6, 1921 |
| Place of foundation | Lisbon |
| Headquarters | Lisbon |
| Alignment | Communism , Marxism-Leninism |
| Parliament seats | 15 of 230 ( Assembleia , 2015 ) |
| International connections | International meeting of communist and workers' parties |
| MEPs | 2 of 21 |
| EP Group | GUE / NGL |
| Website | www.pcp.pt |
The Portuguese Communist Party [ pɐɾ'tidu kumu'niʃtɐ puɾtu'geʃ ] , in German Portuguese Communist Party , also abbreviated PCP , is one of the oldest communist parties in Western Europe that is still active today . In 1987 she joined the electoral alliance Coligação Democrática Unitária (CDU, German: United Democratic Coalition) with the Greens and has been running under this name in elections in Portugal ever since.
The party's general secretary is Jerónimo de Sousa . The party has 13 members in the Portuguese National Assembly. It also provides MEPs in the European Parliament who are part of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left group .
With the Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses (CGTP), the party has a politically close union , its own youth organization, the Juventude Comunista Portuguesa (JCP), and Avante! via its own weekly party newspaper, whose annual press festival “ Festa do Avante! “ Is a major cultural event in Portugal and the party's largest gathering.
history
Founding the party
The PCP was founded on March 6, 1921 as the Portuguese section of the Communist International (Comintern) . It had its forerunners in the union and labor movement as well as anarcho- union currents from the early days of the First Portuguese Republic . In 1923 the PCP held its first party conference in Lisbon .
Estado Novo: In illegality
The coup of May 28, 1926 eliminated the First Republic in Portugal. It was replaced by the Estado Novo , a military dictatorship that gradually developed into an authoritarian, fascist, corporate state under the leadership of Salazar . The Communist Party was banned immediately after the coup in 1926; it was not until 1974, after the Carnation Revolution , that the PCP was re-admitted as a party.
Bento António Gonçalves reorganized the party out of illegality. After Salazar came to power, the party and its leaders became the main targets of state repression; many functionaries were arrested, tortured and sent to internment camps by the PIDE secret police . Gonçalves was also arrested and died in the Tarafal internment camp in Cape Verde . He was succeeded as General Secretary by Álvaro Cunhal , who held this post until 1992.
A communist-inspired mutiny on two Portuguese navy warships anchored in the Tejo in September 1936 was quickly put down. In 1938 the party was expelled from the Comintern, which increasingly came under Stalinist influence. Only in 1947 did the party resume relations with the CPSU and the Soviet Union . In 1945 the Salazar regime was temporarily and cautiously liberalized; with the "Movement of Democratic Unity" ( Movimento de Unidade Democrática , MUD) an opposition group was admitted within which the communists quickly managed to gain influence. In 1948 the MUD was banned again. Álvaro Cunhal traveled to the Soviet Union after relations were resumed and was arrested by the PIDE on his return to Portugal. He remained imprisoned until his escape in 1960; after that he lived in exile in Moscow until the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and later in Prague. In 1961 he was elected general secretary of the party while in exile.
In 1957, the party held its first party conference outside of Portugal in Kiev, where it sided with the emerging African liberation movements that wanted to fight for the independence of the Portuguese colonies from the mother country.
Carnation Revolution and New Beginning
The Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 ended the dictatorship in Portugal. On April 27, the political prisoners, including many communists, were released; on April 30, Álvaro Cunhal returned to Lisbon from his exile in Prague. For the first time in 48 years, May Day was celebrated again in Portugal. More than half a million people attended the central event, at which Álvaro Cunhal and the socialist Mário Soares were the keynote speakers.
On May 17, 1974, the party newspaper Avante! appear legally again in Portugal for the first time, on October 20 the party held another party congress in the country for the first time, and on January 12, 1975 the Communists were the first party to be re-approved in the new Portugal.
After the failed coup of March 11, 1975 by the rather conservative supporters of ex-President Spínola, the provisional government of Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves , in which communist ministers were also involved, tightened its socialist course. A number of measures were carried out, including the nationalization of the Portuguese banks, which was also requested by the PCP. During this time, the party mainly devoted itself to the question of land reform. Above all, the Alentejo, with its regions characterized by large latifundia and a large number of landless farmers, especially around Beja , Évora and Setúbal , became a reliable stronghold of the party.
In the elections to the Constituent Assembly on April 25, 1975, the party achieved 12.52% of the vote and 30 seats. As requested by her, the new Portuguese constitution contained the term “socialism” several times and even once mentioned the “ classless society ”.
In the first parliamentary elections under the new constitution on April 25, 1976, the PCP obtained 14.56% of the vote and 40 seats. The election winners, however, were the socialists who formed a minority government. Prime Minister was Mário Soares. At its eighth party congress that same year, the PCP decided to oppose the new government's policy, which it had conceived as a step backwards in building socialism in Portugal.
Third Republic
In the 1979 parliamentary elections, the party joined a joint list “Alliance of the United People” ( Aliança Povo Unido , APU) together with the “Portuguese Democratic Movement” ( Movimento Democrático Português , MDP / CDE), one from the time of the resistance against the Estado Novo-native group. The APU received 18.96% of the vote and 47 MPs. The election winners were, however, the conservative Social Democrats , whose chairman Sá Carneiro became the new prime minister. The new government tried, step by step, to do away with the socialist measures imposed immediately after the Carnation Revolution, and therefore met the strong resistance of the PCP. In the 1980 elections, the PCP only had 41 MPs; the Social Democrats were able to expand their leadership. In 1983, the party joined the community list APU, which received 18.2% of the votes or 44 seats.
In the 1986 presidential election, Mário Soares took a surprise victory when he came in second with 25%, ahead of PCP candidate Salgado Zenha , who got 21%. The winner in the first round was the conservative candidate, CDS chairman Diogo Freitas do Amaral . So the communists did not make it into the second round of the presidential election, which was to choose between Soares and Freitas do Amaral. The PCP therefore called a special party conference at short notice, at which it called on its supporters to vote for Soares, who was viewed as the lesser evil compared to Freitas do Amaral. Soares was then also the new president.
In 1987 parliamentary elections were held again. The PCP had in the meantime fallen out with the MDP / CDE, its partner within the APU, and therefore joined a new list association : the “ Coligação Democrática Unitaria ” linked the PCP with the Green Party (PEV), and it still exists today. In 1987 the CDU won 12.18% of the vote and 31 seats in parliament.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union
Towards the end of the 1980s there were decisive developments on a world-historical scale. The collapse of socialism in Eastern and Central Europe, German reunification (1990) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991) clearly illustrated the crisis of communism, at least in its Soviet form.
Most of the western European communist parties reacted to these developments with a more or less strong turning away from Marxism-Leninism towards a pluralistic and less dogmatic socialism. An example of this was the development of the party program of the PDS in Germany compared to the program of the SED . The PCP, however, took a different path: at an extraordinary party congress in 1990, after a heated debate, the party's turn to Marxism-Leninism was affirmed, and Álvaro Cunhal was re-elected as the party's general secretary as the guarantor of adherence to the old course.
The party's decision did not pay off in the subsequent elections. In the parliamentary elections of 1991 she only gained 8.84% of the vote (17 members of parliament). In 1992, Carlos Carvalhas was elected to succeed Álvaro Cunhal as general secretary of the party. The 1995 elections brought another slump in electoral favor (8.6%, 15 seats), a slight recovery in the 1999 elections (9%, 17 seats) was not permanent, in the 2002 election the PCP scored his worst result so far with only 7% of the votes (12 seats). Carvalhas resigned from his post in 2004, Jerónimo de Sousa succeeded him. Under his leadership, the party managed to record a slight increase in votes in the 2005 elections (7.6%, 14 MPs); also in the subsequent elections in 2009 (15 seats, 7.86%). The Bloco de Esquerda in particular developed as the greatest opponent on the politically left fringes and was able to tap the PCP's votes, especially in urban areas.
Program and internal party organization
In its program, the PCP describes itself as the “vanguard of the working class”, for whom Marxism-Leninism is the “theoretical basis” of the party (“Partido político e vanguarda da classe operária e de todos os trabalhadores (...)”, “A base teórica do PCP é o marxismo-leninismo ") .
The internal structure of the PCP is based on democratic centralism . The highest organ of the party is the party congress, which consists of elected delegates and must be convened by the Central Committee at least every four years. Between the party congresses, the central committee, which is elected by the party congresses, is responsible for the leadership of the party as a collective body. The members of the Central Committee elect the General Secretary as the highest representative of the party from among their number.
At the 17th party congress, the PCP reaffirmed its negative stance on the European constitution . This is a project of neoliberalism and committed to the interests of international monopoly capital, which restricts the sovereign rights of the smaller member states and is therefore not in the national interest of Portugal. In addition, the party congress rejected membership of the PCP in the European Left Party . Given the diversity of ideological positions, a supranational party would not meet the requirements in the current situation, but would rather represent a concession to the structures of the EU. The party also rejects the euro in its current form; not because it would be against a common European currency in principle, but because it describes the Maastricht criteria associated with the monetary union as neoliberal and contrary to the interests of the Portuguese workers and peasants.
In economic policy, the PCP advocates a mixed economy in which key areas (energy, industry, transport, communication) are to be ensured by state-owned companies. The party continues to call for land reform with the expropriation of the large latifundia and the transfer of the lands to small farmers and cooperatives. In foreign and military policy, the party advocates the dissolution of all military alliances and thus also questions the country's membership in NATO . The PCP spoke out against Portugal's participation in the coalition of the willing during the recent Iraq war . The party also advocates the legalization of abortion , a particularly controversial issue in strongly Catholic Portugal.
General Secretaries
- 1929–1942: Bento António Gonçalves
- 1942–1961: Júlio Fogaça
- 1961-1992: Álvaro Cunhal
- 1992-2004: Carlos Carvalhas
- 2004– : Jerónimo de Sousa
Election results
Parliamentary elections
| Election year | Remarks | Result % | Mandates |
| 1975 | Constituent Assembly | 12.52 | 30th |
| 1976 | 14.56 | 40 | |
| 1979 | APU | 18.96 | 47 |
| 1980 | APU | 16.8 | 41 |
| 1983 | APU | 18.2 | 44 |
| 1985 | APU | 15.5 | 38 |
| 1987 | CDU | 12.18 | 31 |
| 1991 | CDU | 8.84 | 17th |
| 1995 | CDU | 8.6 | 15th |
| 1999 | CDU | 9.0 | 17th |
| 2002 | CDU | 7.0 | 12 |
| 2005 | CDU | 7.6 | 14th |
| 2009 | CDU | 7.86 | 15th |
| 2011 | CDU | 7.91 | 16 |
| 2015 | CDU | 8.25 | 17th |
Presidential election
| Election year | candidate | Result % | space |
| 1976 | Octavio Rodrigues Pato | 7.6% | 4th |
| 1980 | Carlos Alfredo de Brito | ||
| 1986 | Francisco Salgado Zenha | 20.6% | 3 |
| 1991 | Carlos Alberto Carvalhas | 12.9% | 3 |
| 1996 | Jerónimo Carvalho de Sousa | ||
| 2001 | António Simões de Abreu | 5.1% | 3 |
| 2006 | Jerónimo Carvalho de Sousa | 8.6% | 4th |
| 2011 | Francisco Lopes | 7.05% | 4th |
(Source: Comissão Nacional de Eleições -)
In the 1980 elections, Alfredo de Brito withdrew his candidacy before the election in favor of General António Ramalho Eanes . In the 1996 elections, Jerónimo Carvalho de Sousa withdrew his candidacy before the election in favor of Jorge Sampaio .
See also
Web links
- Official Website (Portuguese)
- Party newspaper Avante! (Portuguese)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ party program under [1]
- ↑ Party statute [2]
- ↑ http://www.pcp.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2281&Itemid=245
- ↑ [3]
- ↑ http://www.pcp.pt/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5365&Itemid=245
- ^ National Electoral Commission of Portugal
