BE management denies “identity crisis”, critics lament confusion with Livre and PS
The BE leadership defended this Saturday a party “rooted in the popular struggle” and set out to correct errors, but denied any “identity crisis” in the face of some critics who lamented that the party sometimes “gets confused with Livre and PS”.
These positions were expressed at the 5th BE National Conference, which takes place today and Sunday, in Porto, during the presentation phase of the global strategic document of the political commission (extended direction) and the alternative proposal signed by several elements that were part of Mariana Mortágua’s list at the party’s national table at the last convention.
The deputy and leader of the BE secretariat, Joana Mortágua, began by acknowledging that the party made mistakes that it wants to correct.
Defending a “party rooted in the popular struggle, open and democratic” and assured that the leadership intends to “make use of all instruments of programmatic updating, political training of militancy and internal communication”.
In response to some internal criticism, Joana Mortágua argued that social causes such as feminism or anti-racism helped lead to electoral defeats such as those of Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, leaving a question in the air.
“In these democratic victories, I ask you, comrades, has the working class gained or lost space in the struggle for socialism? Yes, we have to know how to form alliances. We need alliances, not to conciliate, but to polarize. Saying this is not an expression of any identity crisis, it is proof that we are not lost, that we know exactly where we are”, he guaranteed.
Joana Mortágua gave as an example this week’s events in Greater Lisbon, after the death of Odair Moniz, shot by the police in Amadora, stating that the Bloco was “alone in the most difficult position”, but did not “move away from the alliance with the anti-racist movement “.
He then linked the president of Lisbon City Council, Carlos Moedas, to extremism.
“The sliding ramp from the right to extremism needs short circuits, popular punishment to open paths for the left to follow. Defeating Carlos Moedas in Lisbon is exactly that, it is defeating Moedas with a leftist program and going into ideological combat against right and extreme right”, he said, signaling the PT’s openness to an alliance on the left, which includes the PT, which defeats the current municipal government in the capital.
An alternative global document was also presented to the national conference, signed by several elements that were part of Mariana Mortágua’s list at the party’s national table at the last national convention.
In the first public defense of the text — since the subscribers did not want to make statements to the media before the conference — leader Adelino Fortunato called for “debate that goes beyond daily management”, despite regretting that the party is “totally controlled by your device and with practically no room to be influenced”.
Despite considering that it is necessary to intervene in “all social movements”, whether anti-racist, environmentalist, feminist, LGBTQIA+ or others, the blocist stressed that “only the overthrow of capitalism and the seizure of power by the proletariat can create the conditions for these causes are completely successful.”
Regretting that BE has become an “echo chamber of new social movements”, Adelino Fortunato argued that “the conversion of the Bloco into a kind of movement of movements, without the workers’ movement having a leadership role, had consequences negative from various points of view”.
“First of all, because the pressure for dispersion, which appears to be a gain in terms of breadth in the approach to criticism and the structure of capitalism, has become a loss of depth of that same criticism. BE today is a very moderate party, frequently confusing itself with the rest of the social-democratic left, namely Livre and PS, less so”, he lamented.
