13) PROTEST HITS NEW DEAL WITH EURO-TROIKA

            Thousands of people rallied in Athens on Feb. 27, protesting the new “agreement” memorandum with the infamous “troika” - European Union, IMF and European Commercial Bank (ECB) - signed by the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government of Prime Minister Alex Tsipras.

            Organized by the Greek Communist Party (KKE), the rally called for the immediate abolition of the loans agreement, which imposes draconian neoliberal policies on the country. KKE leader Dmitris Koutsoumpas pointed out that a month after coming to office, the new government had still not brought a draft law to Parliament to cancel the debt repayment deal, as many Greeks believed it would. Instead, said Koutsoumpas, the coalition has essentially continued the anti-people line of former governments. After a 4-month extension of the previous terms, predicted the KKE leader, a new version of the memorandum will be reached for the years to come.

            The KKE’s 15 MPs have called on the government to immediately inform Parliament about the new 4-month agreement and submit it to a roll call vote.

            Koutsoumpas added: “The government has baptized meat fish, it talks about extending the loan agreement and not the memorandum. However, we all know that the loan agreement and memorandum are inseparable. It is not long since Mr. Tsipras said the same thing when in opposition… New anti-people laws will be tabled so that the government can pass the evaluation and receive the installment in June. And this government, with its political line, not only does not intend to return to the people everything they lost due to the memoranda, but it will not even give them the crumbs it promised. It now says that it will give these crumbs gradually, over time, when and if the conditions, the fiscal goals and of course the lenders allow it. The troika has been renamed the `three institutions’, as if we were not talking about the same European Commission, ECB and IMF. All the measures taken by capital and its governments remain in place and are reinforced. These are measures taken together with the EU in the conditions of the economic crisis thrust the consequences onto the workers, strengthening capitalist profitability. And all this talk about a `proud’ negotiation is an out and out advertising scam.”

            Analysing the latest deal, the KKE Politbureau stressed that “if there is any revision of the previous program, e.g. lower primary surpluses, it will not be done to increase salaries, pensions, and social benefits but to save state resources which will then be used to support capital, its investments and profitability, as well as to pay the lenders. The employees, unemployed, self-employed, poor farmers and pensioners will go on paying the price for any recovery, through the continuation of austerity, which the government calls frugal living. Even the crumbs, chiefly for those who live in absolute poverty, promised by the government in its program, are up in the air and will depend on the agreement with the partners and with the precondition that they will not endanger fiscal discipline, the recovery of the economy and the profitability of the big businesses.”

(The above article is from the March 16-31, 2015 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)