"Sarney, Sarney, Sarney... I declare before the public my right to govern." "A right given by the sovereignty of the people." "The sky above and our land bear witness to the long, arduous, heroic years that have led to this ceremony, at this very moment." "My mandate bears the marks of struggle." "It has the fire of the people's will, for the freedom to choose, conscious of options." "Maranhão could take no more the contrast between its fertile lands and valleys, waving babaçu palms and its potential wealthy and poverty, anguish, hunger, despair and sails that lead nowhere except when man becomes a beast" "Maranhão wants no dishonesty or corruption in its government." "Violence cannot be used as a political tool to banish the most sacred rights, those of human beings." "No more impunity, guaranteed by the police and freedom reduced" "to a mere chance to suppress people." "Maranhão will have no more of taxes put in private pockets, inexistent dues for inexistent royal coffers, which do exist, because I can tell the names of those who have benefitted throughout years of corruption." "The State wants no poverty, hunger, illiteracy, high mortality rates, or TB, malaria, or schistosomiasis as an everyday event." "Maranhão will not go down silent." "It will not die with wide-open eyes, watching progress in Brazil from the sidelines, nor the North-east progress, while we are swamped by putrefaction, unable to move..." "Then the doctor said I was cured." "Then six months later I shed my last drop of blood and yesterday all my friends came to give their last drops." "No hopes, nothing." "Only faith in God." "I was to have an operation, but I never had the operation." "I'm here now shaking, without a drop of blood in my veins." "Well, you see, it's like this." "We staff do not get paid." "We earn nothing plus a bonus which we've never seen!" "How to build new roads, train technicians and build our ports?" "How to industrialize Maranhão and create new jobs and change the face of 100°/o poor Maranhão in terms of housing, clothing and food?" "We have a large, strong workforce." "Our eyes are turned on a new government and on the concrete dam across the Parnaiba, which greets us as a herald of progress, which is called "Good Hope"." "The Parnaiba river has been tamed so that Piaui and Maranhão may transform the desert, hence the name," ""The Good Hope Plant"." "It is the most prosperous area in the North-east and a magnet for investment." "Our palms have been planted by nature, making Maranhão a great reserve of vegetable oil in the 93,000 miles covered with babaçu palms to export and industrialize and show Brazil what we can do." "One problem gives way to a far greater solution." "The Marquês de Pombal said in a letter to the Governor, that two ancient, blindfolded gods blind justice and love, were proof that they were not blind because justice and love are dangerous to whoever governs here." "He warned us not to erecttemples to these divinities." "Let us take off the blindfolds and see reality!" "Let us build a new government with passion, every minute, everyday, the passion of joy and smiles and tomorrow, hard work to build a free, progressive, great Maranhão!" "A happy State!" "I thank you, my friends."