Free, Block and PCP require veto of the rent law and criticize Government

Othe leaders of the Free, Left Block and Portuguese Communist Party today converged, in a demonstration in Lisbon, in criticism of the law of rents, defending the veto of the President of the Republic if the diploma reaches Belém.

“ With government stubbornness in insisting on this law, there is work to be done, first in the specialty, in Parliament, and if it eventually reaches the President of the Republic in the way it is, or worse, then politically veto this law”, said the MP leader of the Free at the beginning of the demonstration that gathered thousands of people in Lisbon, on the way between Alameda and Martim Moniz.

“ The law does not serve the housing market and is not consensual, the country is on the street asking for the law to fall ", said Isabel Mendes Lopes, criticizing the government for "not listening to the country".

The government “makes crazy ears to the country, but it is not from now on, lives in a bubble without realizing the country it has and the impacts of its policies, which affect many people, and it is necessary to govern for the people and for the country we have, so we appeal to the real dialogue with parties and also with civil society”, he said.

This “law of evictions” does not please or protect the tenants or the small landlords, she added.

Along the same lines, the National Coordinator of the Left Block, José Manuel Pureza, argued that the proposal that regulates rents should be withdrawn: “What should happen is that this government proposal should be withdrawn, it was the only way to sensibly restore peace and decency to the country; if you insist on maintaining your proposal against everything and against everyone, as you did with the labour package, it is time for this proposal to be defeated in the institutions, starting in Parliament and, the President of the Republic being the last guarantor of the system, because then the President, in the case of approval, which I do not believe, is consistent with the defence of the Constitution and veto what will be approved.”.

In the statements to journalists in Alameda, in the centre of Lisbon, the leader of the Left Block criticized the government for “aggravating rather than solving” the housing problem and added that “the strength of the streets is too much” for the government not to change its position.

Already during the descent of Almirante Reis Avenue towards Martim Moniz, the PCP’s general secretary, Paulo Raimundo, stressed the “national dimension of protest against a policy that responds to real estate funds and banks.”.

Asked by journalists, the communist leader argued that “the first measure is to remove the law from evictions, and then to contribute to housing the 15 million euros a day from banking, which always goes alongside these problems”.

The CFP argues that a law on rents must “contain the increase in rents, lower spreads and end bank commissions, within the framework of an answer to the fundamental question, which is the impossibility of the country’s progress with wages of misery”.

The government concluded, “or listens to the street, or lives in its bubble and will end the bomb in its hands.”.

More than 30 cities in Portugal go out today for the “right to live”, within the scope of the national demonstration called by that platform, which requires the reversal of the new rental law, among other measures.

“They will not rob us of the right to live” is the common motto of the 32 protests for the right to housing in various cities of the country.

To the housing policies adopted by the Government, Casa Para Viver, a platform that brings together a hundred associations and collectives for housing and that has already mobilized thousands of people on the streets on several dates, over the last three years, opposes more regulation: of rents, contracts, evictions, return homes, local housing, and real estate speculation.