15,000 support Gomes

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33878, 25 June 1975, Page 15

15,000 support Gomes

(New Zealand Press Association— Copyright) LISBON, June 24. President Francisco da Costa Gomes last night told a rally of 15,000 Socialist Party members and their supporters who had peacefully marched from central Lisbon’s Rossio Piazza to hear him at Belem Palace that “the Portuguese people need bread and will get it only through work, not fighting.”

The demonstrators, including members of the Popular Democratic Party and a few Monarchists went home shortly after midnight. The Socialist Party had called the rally at 7 p.m. last night in support of the President and the ruling High Council of the Revolution, which on Saturday reaffirmed the desire of the military men ruling Portugal since the April, 1974, coup d’etat to turn Portugal into a classless society through pluralism rather than one-party rule. Earlier yesterday, the Communist Party Central' Committee commented that the High Council’s decision conformed — “in general” — to goals of the working people. The party, which emerged as the best organised in Portugal after the fall of the Salazar Caetano regime, proposed that parties in the Government coalition stop attacking each other.

Instead, the parties should look into the possibilities of co-operation while retraining from silencing the expression of their differing viewpoints, the centra] committee said. President Costa Gomes, speaking from the balcony of Belem Palace, urged Portuguese to back up the High Council’s choice of the pluralist path to socialism, “Socialism yes, dictatorship no,” the crowd responded immediately.

“We must overcome our differences to create a programme on which we will all agree.” the President went on. “The Portuguese people need bread, and bread is not made with weapons, but with work.”

Before the rally ended, the 'crowd sang the national i anthem and cheered the

President and General Carlos Fabiao, Army Chief of Staff, who stood at President Costa Gomes’s side.