Article from Bloco website, 21st May 2025

In a message to its supporters, the Political Commission of the Left Bloc announced that it will hold plenary sessions to discuss the election results and ‘the mistakes and successes’ of ‘the most difficult campaign of our lives.’

With the National Bureau meeting scheduled for this Saturday, the Bloco will begin the process of internal reflection on the results of Sunday’s elections. In a message sent to its members, the party’s Political Committee promises to respond to the ‘worst result ever in legislative elections’ with a ‘frank and open’ debate on the reasons behind the ‘overwhelming shift to the right’ in the country.

Stressing that ‘the combined votes of the PS and the parties to its left are the lowest ever’ and that there is an unprecedented risk of constitutional revision carried out exclusively by the right, Bloco leaders argue that this fact ‘should determine new broad unity in action in the democratic camp in defence of the April Constitution’. (The 1974 Carnation revolution that ended the fascist dictatorship established a progressive democratic constitution-Tr.)

‘This was the most difficult campaign of our lives,’ says the note to supporters, highlighting the “bravery” of activists and volunteers who showed ‘a party mobilised, door to door, street to street, faced with an unprecedented shift to the right’. But the political impact of our rent cap proposal ‘did not translate into more electoral support, nor was it enough to counter the dynamics of the far-right’s anti-immigration discourse’. This was stoked up by ’sensationalism in a number of media outlets and the manipulation of the masses through social media which managed to instill ’a xenophobic and racist common sense that put the left on the defensive and unable to set the agenda.’

In the coming weeks, the Bloco leadership will organise, ‘with frankness and openness’, plenary debates on ‘the reasons for this result, our mistakes and successes, as well as the organisational and communication experiences we want to take forward’. The aim is to ‘listen to all activists, but also to comrades on the left with whom we want to share the path forward’.

‘The Bloco is not closing itself off: we will fight for freedom and for the future of the left throughout the country, we want an open space of resistance, without sectarianism,’ concludes the message to members, calling for ‘more organisation and militancy’ to simultaneously ‘row against the tide of the right’ and ‘relaunch the Bloco and create new forms of organisation and participation’.

For details on results of Portuguese elections see: Portuguese general election – Right and hard right further advance – Anticapitalist Resistance

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