“I swear on my honor to faithfully perform the functions in which I am invested and defend, comply and enforce the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic”, said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, giving the declaration of commitment.
The retired professor, 72 years old, swore again the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic in the presence of 100 people, including 50 of the 230 deputies.
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“Today, as five years ago, Portugal is the sole raison d’être of the solemn commitment that I have just made. And to say Portugal is to say the Portuguese. Because a homeland is much more than the place where we were born ”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said, in the first intervention of his second term.
“A country is above all people, and in it every person counts. Diverse, different, unrepeatable. Portugal is the Portuguese ”, he stressed.
Thus, the Portuguese are the reason why Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa assumes this commitment, “starting with those who need it most: the homeless; those with a roof but without adequate housing; those my age, or older, but who live in homes or at home in solitude or cared for by formal or informal caregivers; poor pensioners and pensioners; the unemployed in lay-off; precarious workers and entrepreneurs; children, young people, families, teachers, non-teachers run over in two school years; those that save life and health; those who help them to save; those who lose life and health; those who lose loved ones without a farewell to illness and death; those who leave us wanting to return; those who take us in and stay; and those who – and are all – in the diaspora, in the Azores, in Madeira, on the continent, never give up on Portugal ”.
Recalling that, in 2016, there was a “total” division between those “who had borne the Government in crisis and those who had opposed it”, both in ideas and in policies and emotions, and in a troubled phase for Europe, the President highlighted how Portugal “would come out of the excessive deficit process” and “would take important steps towards budgetary balance, internationalization, digital, exports, tourism, innovation and some agricultural change”, as well as alleviating poverty and social inequalities.
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“Less predictable” times followed, with a pandemic “which would no longer stop harassing everyone and everything”.
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It was “a devastating year for life and health, employment and income, plans and achievements, communities, families, people, each of us”, and the pandemic in health was joined by the pandemic “ in the economy and in society ”.
“Heroism is no longer just an instant: it is now a year. Almost endless, more difficult, more stoic, more valuable ”.
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Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that this is the first time in democracy that a President of the Republic takes office in a state of emergency, before a Assembly that never stopped working “at the service of the Portuguese”, in an example of “dedication to democracy”.
“May this be the first lesson for today: we live in democracy. We want to continue to live in democracy. And in democracy to fight the most serious pandemics. We prefer freedom to oppression; the dialogue to the monologue; pluralism to censorship”, He stressed.
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“Portuguese, it remains to remember the obvious: I am the same as five years ago, I am the same as yesterday, in the exact same terms, elected and re-elected to be President of all of you, with independence, a spirit of commitment and stability, proximity, affection, preference. for the excluded, honesty, convergence in the essential, alternative between two strong, sustainable and credible areas, rejection of presidential messianisms, in the exercise of power or in the anticipated nostalgia for the end of that exercise, in respect for difference and pluralism, in the construction of social justice , in the pride of being Portugal, of being Portuguese “, ended Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
Costa praises “institutional cooperation” agenda
At the end of the inauguration of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, António Costa found the speech of the President of the Republic in Parliament comforting in terms of confidence and hope, having revealed “a very clear agenda” for institutional cooperation and strategic cooperation.
“I believe that after listening to him – and after a year as hard as the one we have been collectively facing to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, to resist the economic and social crisis -, we left with another spirit. We left comforted with a sense of confidence and hope that it is possible to overcome this crisis, turn this page and rebuild the country “, declared the Chief Executive.
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The prime minister also said that the country is facing “a very clear agenda”.
An agenda “not only of institutional cooperation, but of strategic solidarity that will surely unite the Portuguese around the mandate of the President of the Republic”, he added.
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“It is with emotion that the AR meets with the President”
Right after Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s oath, the president of the Assembly of the Republic, Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, saluted the head of state and declared that witnessing the inauguration “is undoubtedly one of the most important acts of our democracy”.
“The restricted format of the ceremony [devido à pandemia de Covid-19] however, it does not remove solemnity, meaning or an attentive audience ”, he said. “It is with emotion that the Assembly of the Republic meets today with the President of the Republic under the force of the Constitution”.
Recalling the pandemic situation in which the presidential campaign took place, Ferro Rodrigues stressed that “it is above all in contexts of crisis or in extraordinary circumstances like the ones we face that we have to be uncompromising in the defense of democracy and demanding in the fulfillment of its rules and in respect for the fundamental rights that our Constitution enshrines ”.
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In his speech, Ferro Rodrigues defended that combating the pandemic is, in the short term, the priority.
“Winning the pandemic is essential for restoring normal family and social life, returning children and young people to school, resuming economic activity, recovering jobs and overcoming the economic and social – and cultural crisis, because without culture we would not survive. The knowledge acquired in the meantime and the hope that the vaccine has brought bring us a new breath and allow us to foresee, in the not too distant future, if not the eradication of the virus, at least an end to many of the restrictions we currently live in, “he said.
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“A demanding and painful walk”
On the way to the Parliament, which he did on foot, shortly before taking office for the second term as President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa envisioned the near future. “I didn’t expect there to be any problems that there were and also the joys that there were”, said the Head of State, in a short review of the first term.
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Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced his re-election to the post of President of the Republic on December 7 of last year, alone, in a pastry shop next to the Palace of Belém, in Lisbon, space where his campaign headquarters was held in the 2016 presidential elections.
Reelected in the presidential elections of January 24, with 60.67% of the votes cast, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa obtained the second best result of Portuguese democracy in the reelection of a President, just behind Mário Soares. In 2016, he had been elected with 52.00% of the votes cast.
Now, in the midst of a global health and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, he is sworn in for a second five-year term as President of the Republic.
With the country in a state of emergency, Marcelo had already declared that he would never leave in the middle of this “demanding and painful walk” and that was “exactly the same as he advanced five years ago”, committed to stabilize and unite the Portuguese, to overcome the current crisis.
His re-application was formally supported by PSD and CDS-PP, while the PS in the Government chose not to support any candidate, but approved a motion with a “positive assessment” of his first term.
In his victory speech on the electoral night, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa affirmed “having the notion that the Portuguese, when reinforcing their vote, want more and better” in proximity, stability, demand, adding: “I understood this sign and I will remove it the necessary lessons ”.
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