These positions were assumed by José Pedro Aguiar-Branco in his first speech as president of parliament in a solemn session commemorating April 25, 1974. According to the former Minister of Defense, half a century after the April revolution, "the country wants more, demands more health, more education, more justice, more housing, more development". "It is this heavy legacy that explains so many disillusioned Portuguese, so many angry Portuguese, so much polarization, so much radicalization and so much populism. Should we blame the Portuguese for this? Should we blame them for their choices at the polls?" he asked. The President of the Assembly of the Republic then noted that he had "genuine doubts" that the answer to these angry Portuguese "is more ideology, more cultural wars, more partisanship, more political tactics or more parliamentary games". "The disappointment of some is resolved with good governance. The polarization of others is resolved with solutions. With concrete actions and not with more or less inflammatory words and speeches. And note the expression I purposely used. Resolve. Not fight," he stressed. José Pedro Aguiar-Branco completed this idea, saying that "the house of democracy" cannot be seen as a "castle closed in on itself, protected behind bars that, for comfort or security, we have symbolically left in place". "The house of democracy cannot serve to defend the regime. That was the other one, the so-called National Assembly. And even less does the house of democracy serve to defend democracy. It serves to build democracy. Every day, with more policies than politics, with more courage than games or concerns about popularity," he said. In this context, the social democrat José Pedro Aguiar-Branco evoked the action of the former President of the Republic, founder and first leader of the PS, Mário Soares, even considering that "he was the greatest personification of a spirit of common sense and wisdom that today, in politics, is called moderation". "The man who fought the PCP in the streets was the same one who did not allow its illegalization. The man who amnestied Otelo was the same one who brought Spínola to his side. What some may call ideological and political contradictions, he would call reconciliation. Of respect for difference of thought, for diversity of ideas," he said. An attitude that, according to the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Mário Soares adopted "not because of a caste notion of tolerance, but because of the certainty that the country only grows and develops with difference and through difference". On the PS bench, there was applause again. "The certainty that difference demands more of us. That difference adds and increases. That is wisdom. It is common sense. As a Portuguese, citizen and voter, I can only expect the same for this house: The greatest respect for difference, of which the composition of this assembly is, today, an example, the fruit of the free affirmation of the will of the Portuguese," he added. Read Also: Aguiar-Branco asks deputies to break down barriers between elected officials and voters (Portuguese version)