In a debate between Portugal’s two anticapitalist political forces, Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) and PCP (Portuguese Communist Party), which vote together in almost all parliamentary votes, the moderator began by asking Paulo Raimundo [PCP General Secretary] and Mariana Mortágua [Bloco coordinator] to outline the topics that separate them from the start of the debate.

Both emphasised their history of agreement but did not leave the question unanswered. Paulo Raimundo pointed to the dissolution of SEF [Foreign and Borders Service, Portugal’s former immigration agency] as one of the measures that Bloco defended and that PCP did not support, while Mariana Mortágua responded that she regrets that the PCP does not stand up to defend the right to euthanasia or parity laws.

Once the differences were identified, the debate continued on tax proposals aimed at reducing inequalities, and that’s where another, more unexpected difference emerged. Mariana Mortágua presented Bloco’s proposal to tax millionaires, specifically “the richest 0.05%” of the country, a measure that the Tax Justice Network calculated could bring more than three billion euros to state coffers. “If someone tells me this is not a fair tax, I don’t know what a fair tax would be. It certainly wouldn’t be the VAT that people pay on electricity,” stated the Bloco coordinator.

Paulo Raimundo commented on this proposal to tax the wealthiest by stating that “it’s one way, but we don’t need to go that far” and arguing that there are sufficient resources in the state budget to produce the same result. He gave examples of the €1,700 million in tax advantages for non-residents, more than €1,000 million in road PPPs [Public-Private Partnerships], or revenue lost with the reduction of IRC [Corporate Income Tax] which “paid for the public nursery network.”

On the housing theme, the PCP leader stated that the origin of the problem is that “we haven’t had a government with courage, and that’s what we need.” As for solutions, besides a courageous government, he says the housing crisis “is not simple to solve overnight: we need to invest to build, renovate, tackle the rent problem, give stability to rental contracts.”

“Rent caps solve what no other measure solves, that is, lowering rent prices now”
For her part, Mariana Mortágua insisted on the proposal to create rent caps. A measure that “doesn’t solve everything, but solves what no other measure solves, that is, lowering rent prices now.” And she referred to the previous debate with the PS [Socialist Party, Portugal’s main centre-left party] leader to conclude that “waiting for construction to happen, as Pedro Nuno Santos [PS General Secretary] proposes, is abandoning people.”
“Rent caps work and manage to lower housing prices right now, for this generation. Construction will be needed, short-term rentals reduced, hotel construction stopped in saturated cities, public heritage allocated and rehabilitated, the informal market combated. But these proposals take time, and people need housing today, not in 15 or 20 years,” she continued.

On the theme of immigration, Paulo Raimundo began by acknowledging that “Portugal is a country with limited resources” and then asked, “If the immigrants who work here left, what would be left of the economy?” Building on his housing construction proposal, he states that “we don’t have people to work,” so “either we consider this the reality, or we’re talking about a country that doesn’t exist.”

Mariana Mortágua used the topic to return to the difference raised by Paulo Raimundo at the beginning of the debate and explain the reason why Bloco defended the end of SEF: “Immigration is not a crime, it doesn’t need a police force but administrative means.” She also recalled the context of the measure, following the death of a Ukrainian immigrant in SEF custody at Lisbon airport. Then, she stated that AIMA [Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum], created to succeed SEF in the administrative part, “has not worked,” without that being a reason to say the same thing about the expression of interest mechanism.

“It’s a huge hypocrisy to say there’s no integration of immigrants when you don’t give two basic things: access to public services and documents,” said the Bloco coordinator, attributing the recent drift of the government and PS to what she called the “ideological reservoir of the far right that has dragged the major parties to the right.”
Russians at Leixões port, Americans in the Azores: the “boogeyman” of invasions closed the debate
On post-electoral scenarios, Mariana Mortágua maintains her willingness to discuss with left-wing MPs the proposals she is carrying in this campaign to lower rents, a fair tax policy, and the defence of shift workers. And she drew attention to “the PS’s right turn in this campaign, waiting to have one more MP than the PSD [Social Democratic Party, Portugal’s main centre-right party] so that the latter allows it to govern.”

For Paulo Raimundo, what is at stake in this campaign is not only the affairs involving Luís Montenegro [Portuguese Prime Minister and PSD leader] – with whom he had the opportunity to debate on television, unlike the Bloco coordinator – but the consequences of the government’s policy, because “what is being prepared is the privatisation of health and getting hold of Social Security.”

The international political climate, with European calls for increased armament spending, once again put the two candidates in agreement. To those who accuse her of “naivety,” in the moderator’s words, Mariana responded that “naivety is thinking that the world hasn’t changed, that Europe, which exports weapons and has an arsenal far superior to Russia’s, is defenceless and that the Russians are going to invade us through the port of Leixões.” [important maritime port near Porto],

Paulo Raimundo completed this image, stating that “we should be as concerned about the invasion of Russians at Leixões port as about that of Americans in the Azores [Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic where there is an American base].” And he reaffirmed his “position of clarity on the events in Ukraine, which did not begin in 2022 but in 2014.”

Paulo Raimundo is General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and Mariana Mortágua is coordinator of Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc).