Communist Party of Greece on the early election
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following August 24 statement from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). In the face of the early elections
The SYRIZA-ANEL government recently resigned, resulting in new early parliamentary elections (most likely on the 20/9).
As is well known, SYRIZA won the elections in January 2015, deceiving the workers, promising the abolition of the anti-people laws, which had been previously passed by the governments of PASOK and ND, after the agreements (memoranda) with the imperialist organizations (EU, IMF, ECB).
The KKE had warned in a timely fashion that SYRIZA, a “left”, an opportunist party which mutated into a social-democratic party, was chosen by the bourgeoisie to manage the crisis and cannot implement a political line in favor of the people.
Our party had formulated its position that there can be no way out in favor of the working class and the other popular strata inside the capitalist development path, the EU and NATO.
As was demonstrated in a few months of managing capitalism, the “left” SYRIZA, which governed together with “right” nationalist party ANEL, not only did not abolish the 2 previous memoranda and most of the 400 anti-people application laws of the previous governments, but implemented them and passed through Parliament a third even more painful agreement (memorandum) with the imperialist powers. This agreement had the support of the other bourgeois parties and was voted for in Parliament by them: “rightwing” ND, “Social-democratic” PASOK, the “centre” party “POTAMI”. This new agreement massacres any rights that have remained, imposes new reductions in wages and pensions, abolishes social-security rights, imposes even more intense taxation of the popular strata, promotes the policy of privatizations etc.
In addition, the “Left-patriotic” government consistently operated during these months inside the framework of our country’s participation in the imperialist unions of NATO and the EU, of the “strategic alliance” with the USA. It participated in every NATO mission and exercise, it organized military exercises even with Israel, it promised a new base for the USA and NATO (on the island of Karpathos), it voted in the EU for the extension and reinforcement of the trade war against Russia etc.
So, in practice it has been demonstrated that the SYRIZA-ANEL government is another anti-people government, which with “”left” slogans served in an equally faithful way the bourgeoisie, the EU and NATO as the previous governments had done. Today, the governing SYRIZA-ANEL parties, using the same arguments that ND and PASOK had used in the past, defends the new anti-people agreement as the only way of keeping the country in the Eurozone and EU, something that it presents as the people’s salvation. SYRIZA, just as all the other bourgeois parties, sows the illusion amongst the working class and people that the EU and capitalism can be humanized, as long as the workers continue to endure the anti-people measures.
At the same time, the bourgeois political system in order to curb and control any radical changes in the people’s consciousness that could be brought about by the exposure of SYRIZA’s role continues to manufacture new parties. One such party, with the title “Laiki Enotita” (People’s Unity), was formed by MPs and former ministers from SYRIZA. These forces, which were active as a “left platform” inside SYRIZA, bear grave responsibilities as regards the deception of the people. They participated, even as ministers, in the implementation of the previous anti-people laws. They actively participated in the attempt during the previous period to trick the people that there is an alternative proposal for them inside the walls of the EU and agreed with the anti-people agreement that was signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL government with the Troika on the 20th of February, with the anti-people proposal of 47 pages submitted by SYRIZA to the EU etc. Now that the illusions fostered by SYRIZA have been dented, these forces promote the return to the national currency as a solution for the people, along with other measures for the management of the system. They act as a “barrier” to the radicalization of the people, seeking to trap the people inside the capitalist development path.
Over this entire period, the KKE consistently exposed the role of SYRIZA and the other bourgeois parties, struggled for the abolition of the memoranda and all the anti-people measures, to prevent new measures, to develop the workers’-people’s struggle for the recovery of their losses and the satisfaction of their needs in combination with the only alternative solution that is in the interests of the working class and other popular strata:
The regroupment of the labor movement and the construction social-people’s alliance between the working class, the poor farmers, the urban self-employed, the youth and women from the families of the popular strata in order to strengthen the antimonopoly-anticapitalist struggle for the real overthrow, the socialization of the monopolies, the disengagement from the EU and NATO and the unilateral cancellation of the debt, with workers’-people’s power.
We are waging the struggle with this line in order to strengthen the KKE in the labour-people’s movement and in Parliament, unwaveringly continuing the struggle for the interests of the working class and its liberation from the shackles of capitalist exploitation.