Monday, July 8, 2019
After July 7th elections New Democracy (ND) returned to office with a percentage that gives them absolute majority in the Parliament. This is the result of the reactionary road paved by the anti-grassroots policies that the government of SYRIZA followed during the last years. This government change will continue and deepen the attack against the rights of toilers and the people. This is reinforced by the fact that the bourgeois parties that support and push this attack (ND, SYRIZA, KINAL-the former mighty social-democratic PASOK) gathered all together 80% of the votes, which constitutes a major success of systemic powers in and out of the country. The elections also recorded the establishment of abstention, which, on one hand, enlarges the percentage of the ruling parties, but, on the other, greatly consists a form of manifestation against these anti-grassroots policies followed by all governments during the last years.
ND’s high percentage -always in relation to the percentage of the main bourgeois political parties before the crisis- allows it to fling itself into a full-on aggression, in order to satisfy the demands of local and foreign capital, leading toilers to further poverty and the country to stronger attachment to the imperialist interests. The meetings of the new Prime Minister Mitsotakis with US and European representatives before the elections, showed that the imperialists (especially the USA), after the realization of their basic demands by a government presented as left, following the “pause” of any popular movement, have chosen to promote their goals, in a period when the geostrategic issues in the Balkans and East Mediterranean consist the first and decisive choice in their conflict with Russia, supporting a power experienced with handling the regime, as ND.
The anti-grassroots policies that SYRIZA followed the previous years allowed to greatly re-establish the once scorned main pillars of bourgeois political power after their being disdained following the mass popular resistance of 2010-2012. Thus, even KINAL (PASOK) managed to rally some of the ex-PASOK forces, therefore regaining part of the voters that were facing towards SYRIZA in 2015.
SYRIZA, through extortionate dilemmas, managed to limit its losses from the European and municipal elections, and earned the position of the second pillar of the bourgeois system, with a percentage of 31.5%. Their loss will certainly lead to reforms in their party -after two rises to governmental power and the tribute paid to them by the US and German imperialists- free of any burden of their left past. Their role in the opposition will consist of defending the anti-grassroots policies, which will definitely not help the people at all.
A part of the disappointed SYRIZA’s voters (and not only them) was incorporated by Varoufakis” party. Wearing the mask of the “anti-memorandum militant” and that of the “hardcore dealer”, as well as hiding his responsibility as a Minister of Finance of the first SYRIZA government, the TV persona-Varoufakis is yet another willing crutch of capitalism; he is just another one hit wonder of politics (out of quite a variety that have appeared from time to time).
The electoral loss of the nazi Golden Dawn definitely causes every democrat’s satisfaction as well as that of all the forces that resisted this fascist form’s murderous policies. However, we must not let slip the fact that a great part of its supporters chose ND or Velopoulos (the leader of the new party Greek Solution) as their representatives in the elections, in front of the danger of an exemplary conviction by the juridical system of some of their major executives (the Golden Dawn trial still continues after 4 years). This means that the far right -or outright fascist- forms of expression can find new ways or new entities towards the parliament. It is certain that the reactionary politics of the new government and the general tendency of fascistization that the system raises, will make it easier for the strengthening of such political entities as a weapon to terrorize the people.
People of the left, having been nurtured with delusions of left governments, “counterattacks” through proposed laws and other delusions of governmental management, have been found without the necessary ideological provisions before this reactionary turn of events that the overwhelming attacks of the latest governments (PASOK, ND and SYRIZA) have built up. Once again they have been trapped by false preachings of anti-right-winged fronts with SYRIZA. Therefore, a small part of these people that expressed their anger in recent local and European elections, returned their votes to SYRIZA as a response to the imminent ownership of the Parliament by Mitsotakis; on the other hand another part of the people chose to abstain, having one of the greatest percentages of abstention in the history of elections for the Greek Parliament.
The Communist Part of Greece was grounded – despite its clinging more to the right, its election-centered politics and its effort to pose their own false dilemmas. The fake image of self-sufficiency, the dead ends of their activist actions and the fine words of class struggle (which during the elections period translated into the surrounding of their ballots by people that are by no means related to popular movements and the Left) proved themselves but mere tricks that cannot offer any real escape.
LAE and ANTARSYA suffered great losses in votes, bearing the cost of the collapse of their own delusions regarding SYRIZA and their resolutions of the possibility of a governmental change. The various programs that they so easily devised (transitional programs, programs for a progressive government, rescue programs and all sorts of programs) are now stale.
All the above prove that the grounds on which the Left can be strengthened and reinforced are no other than the grounds of struggle and resistance that grow within the working class and the people, not any parliamentary processes, nor the various political tricks and any sorts of activism.
We, the Communist Party of Greece(marxist-leninist) salute the members, comrades and every person of popular struggle that supported our effort in this year’s elections to resist against all kinds of parliamentary delusions, against all kinds of political extortion and any disorienting plans for easy “solutions”.
The electoral result of the CPG(m-l) reflects a stable and discrete base of people that embrace our resolutions that the strengthening of the bonds with the people and the working class can only be accomplished through daily struggles to claim our rights to labour, studies and life; it can only be accomplished against the warmongering plans of the imperialists in the wider area of the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The people and the youth will soon face boldly aggressive politics against their rights and they will have to structure their opposition against this aggression. For us the first task is to reorganize the working class, the toilers in general, and the youth, in their own organizational structures, that will not express a social consent at all, but instead they will clearly reflect the class struggle that surpasses the whole social and political corpus of this exploitative society.
This critical period for the revolutionary Left begins anew after the elections, in the fronts of our tough daily lives and in the fronts of class struggle. In these fronts we will too be judged and we will strengthen our forces through our participation in them. Our goal is to proceed with consistency and decisiveness. Through the new struggles and the new outbreaks that will come, to reinforce them and give them their appropriate political meaning towards the way to independence and socialism.
