Let us say something about what we should do at this moment to hasten the victory of our people on the various resistance fronts.

What should we do? We must improve our political work. We must better organise our armed forces and make them operate more and more intensively. We must strengthen and increasingly consolidate our liberated areas. We should give better guidance to our supporters in all fields of activity, and guide correctly our students and our cadres under training. We should operate with increasing efficiency, with more awareness and for better results on the external plane, in our relations with Africa and with the world in general.

We must constantly improve our thinking and behaviour to give better service to our great party in the service of our people in Guinea and Cape Verde.

One can never say too strongly that the political work is a fundamental task of our struggle, so fundamental that, as I told you a while ago, every shot fired is also a political act. It is fundamental that in our party the leaders in the armed struggle are political leaders. Comrade Nino is at this moment deploying his efforts to carry out a plan which I drew up point by point after discussion with all concerned to develop a new kind of operational action in our struggle. He is commander-in-chief of this operation and he is a member of the Political Bureau of our party. Any leader of our armed struggle, like Tchutchu or Bobo, who are sitting here, or Lúcio or Nandingna, or others here, are also party leaders, in its political leadership, and some of them have already been members of party committees at various stages, heads of party committees or ordinary members of a regional committee. We feel therefore that we do not draw a distinction between politics and other tasks, for to give health treatment, education, to supply cloth and other goods to raise living standards is also political. To fire shots, to work at the international level is also political. But given that our life is complex with various functions to fulfil, there are persons who have the specific task of devoting themselves to political work.