Marcelo warns of the urgency of remembering Soares and regrets seeing “moderates not having any empathy for each other”
This Monday, the President of the Republic evoked the historic socialist leader Mário Soares, stating that it is “urgent to remember” his legacy, especially because he considered that there was a lot of empathy between reactionaries and revolutionaries and “moderates who have no empathy at all for each other” .
In a speech to close the presentation of the book from the “Obras de Mário Soares” collection, A História Contada, by Maria João Avillez, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, remembering the former President of the Republic with the “highest degree of empathy”, highlighted how the ideological differences “have nothing to do” with the empathy that is created between two personalities.
“I have seen a lot of reactionaries have empathy for revolutionaries. Amazing. And moderates have no empathy for each other. And that happens”, said the head of state, although without specifying names, in a moment that generated laughter in an audience that included the leader of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos.
The head of state considered that it is currently “urgent to remember the journey that (Mário Soares) took in the fight for freedom, democracy, Europe, the rule of law and beyond”, because, he said, there is currently a ” strictly political problem”, beyond the problems of other times, which were “economic or social”.
Marcelo referred, for example, to the possibility of “someone we already know for what he meant” being elected in the North American elections, referring to Donald Trump and the possibility of there being a “rupture in the positions that the European Union and the United States have had” on matters such as the war in Ukraine or the conflict in the Middle East.
Regarding the war in Ukraine, the President warned that “the most serious thing is that (this conflict) can truly mean a geopolitical winner and that geopolitical winner, by chance, has not been in the hemisphere in which the European Union has been located and other countries allies have situated”.
The President of the Republic warned of the “fragility of European and North American democratic systems”, highlighting the importance of cultivating Soares’ values for Portugal and Europe in a “broader” way.
“The issue of democracy, the rule of law, freedom, are posed in unthinkable terms for Mário Soares, at the time when he lived in a specific Europe and fought for a specific Portugal”, said Marcelo, who this Tuesday meets the State Council to debate the “international and national economic and financial situation”.
