Marcos Borga / LUSA
The candidate for President of the Republic, André Pestana
Candidate for president of the Republic wants Portugal to have a new left and to put an end to the millions it sends to NATO.
The presidential candidate André Pestana defends “a new left” for Portugal, without links to the contraption and the “old eastern bloc”, assuming that he wants to be a President of the Republic who will be alongside the people fighting in the streets.
“Clearly what it seems to me is that Portugal needs a new left. A left that is not included nor with what happened in the last decades of PS, of contraption, but it is also not a left associated with old east block. It is a left that believes in the collective strength of social mobilization”, he said, in an interview with the Lusa agency.
Biology and geology teacher, trade unionist and one of the founders of the Union of All Education Professionals (STOP), André Pestana is running for Belém Palace to be alongside the people and fight in defense of labor rights, of the retired and the questions ecological.
The professor said that he was challenged by more than 50 activists, union leaders and social movements to run for Belém because “the struggle, particularly in education, was a great example”, which later influenced other sectors.
“My performance will be completely different from the presidencies of the Republic that we have had. In recent decades there have been many attacks on those who work and the presidents of the Republic have been silent and, at times, alongside these anti-popular government measures”, he highlighted.
André Pestana confessed that it will be the President who will be “on the side of fair mobilizations” whether for labor rights, such as the Government’s proposal, or for ecological issues, considering “what is happening with the new land law that this President of the Republic has let pass” is extremely serious.
As a candidate for Belém, the union leader revealed that he has four priorities: lowering the retirement age to 62, a minimum pension of 1000 euros, ending “millionaire subsidies” to political parties and putting an end to the millions that Portugal sends to NATO.
“My priorities are the issue of lowering the age of retirement for age 62in other words, we have to have time to live and not constantly watch the retirement age increase. Another priority is a minimum renovation of 1000 euros to give dignity to our elderly”, he stated.
André Pestana highlighted that he is “the only candidate” who wants “end million-dollar subsidies to political parties”, adding that Chega, PSD and PS “receive more than five million euros annually”, in addition to the “millions they already receive in electoral campaigns”.
Asked how a head of state could achieve those objectives, he recalled the demonstration held in 2012, at the time of the ‘troika’ against the Single Social Tax (TSU), in which the Portuguese population took to the streets and the President of the Republic at the time, Cavaco Silva, was “on the side of the Government against the interest of the majority” of Portuguese people.
“I will be on the side of these revolutions, as has also been seen recently (…) in the great struggle of teachers, whose struggle and social mobilization has resulted in around 100,000 teachers gaining service time today”, he stressed.
The teacher also assumed against NATOarguing that Portugal should not provide “not one more euro for NATO and for the wars that NATO wants to promote”.
“We are, in a way, the ones financing the powerful arms industry of the United States and this makes us complicit in this intervention in Venezuela (…) and in Gaza in which the United States sponsored Israel in military terms,” he stated.
André Pestana also contested the fact that Portugal could start “spending 5% of GDP, which will be around 15 billion euros” on weapons.
“This will further ruin the National Health Service, even more public schools and the purchasing power of those who live here. I don’t want that. If I am President of the Republic, I will do everything I can to ensure that no more money goes to weapons, but to the common good”, he highlighted.
