13) GREEKS PROTEST DESPITE POLICE REPRESSION

By Kimball Cariou

     Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators rallied across Greece on Feb. 12, in the largest action yet against the attempt by the Greek government and the EU to impose drastic cuts in living standards. In Athens, the main rally organized by PAME (All-Workers Militant Front" demanded the resignation of the government, and rejection of any agreement to force working people to pay for the financial crisis.

     The main speaker at PAME's rally, Christos Katsiotis, said "The people must not be quiet and allow themselves to be flayed alive. It is of no importance whether this happens inside or outside of the Euro, with a controlled or uncontrolled bankruptcy. What is of vital importance is that the people decide that they will make no more sacrifices for the plutocracy, to fill the treasure vaults of the capitalists, while they and their children will be submerged in absolute poverty and destitution."

     The demonstrators remained for over six hours in the streets, formed into huge contingents with arms linked, despite violent police repression and the provocateurs who burnt buildings in the city centre.

     The government's plan was that the people should not reach Syntagma Square in front of Parliament. In unprovoked attacks, the police used tonnes of tear gas (exhausting their entire supplies) and stun grenades, against demonstrators who had flooded the city centre when the new memorandum was being discussed in Parliament.

     The Greek Communist Party (KKE) condemned a "state plan to repress and intimidate the people. At the time when the parties of the plutocracy and the EU predatory alliance extort and threaten the people, voting for a memorandum for the people's bankruptcy .... the riot police and the hooded ones operated in a coordinated fashion against the magnificent demonstrations of the people in order to disperse them..."

     Inside Parliament, the 21-member Parliamentary group of the KKE exposed the blackmailing by the government, PASOK, ND (New Democracy), and the media, concerning the "inevitability" of the Loan Agreement. The communists argued that no MP has the right to vote for barbaric measures which wipe out working class income.

     Public pressures sharpened the contradictions in the ruling class parties, to the point where 22 PASOK and 21 New Democracy MPs voted "no" and were expelled from their caucuses (including current and former cabinet ministers). The nationalist LAOS party, which had said it would vote no, did not participate. Overall 199 out of the 278 MPs voted for the Loan Agreement, with 74 against.

     The draft law was symbolically thrown from the benches of the KKE Parliamentary Group at the benches of the cabinet ministers.

     The General Secretary of the KKE, Aleka Papariga, took the floor and said, "You are literally trying to subjugate the minds of the people who suffer, of the poor people, by means of an unprecedented ideological intimidation. Excuse me, I do not identify you with him, but Goebbels would be envious of you. A big bankruptcy is coming! Whom are you talking to? To the people who have already been bankrupted? No, we are not interested in a Greece which will have been saved and the people will have been bankrupted...

     "Since the morning you have been continuously talking about destruction even about civil war ... We have been listening to you all day telling us that we will have no pensions, that we will receive vouchers, and at the end you are talking about civil war. Now who is triggering the situation? We have our limits. We are polite but we are not stupid... Therefore we say to the people the following: the deep bankruptcy will come, either with the euro or the drachma, we cannot know this in advance.

     "Even if Greece enhances its competitiveness other countries will develop even more. In the best case it might climb up 2‑3 positions. But this competitiveness will cost even more to the working people. Greece will be over‑indebted for 150 years, as was the case with the loans of independence.... In any case he who is down must fear no fall. The people will not avoid bankruptcy no matter what they do, even if they accept to work for free, for one, two or three years. Our position is: struggles which might prevent the worst. But in order to do this the people's movement must be directed towards the succession of this political system by the political system of the workers' and people's power. Disengagement and unilateral cancellation of the debt; there is no other solution for the people."

     Recent opinion surveys indicate that the KKE, which received 7.5% of the votes in the 2009 parliamentary election, is now running at 12-13%, ahead of PASOK. New elections are expected this spring.

(The above article is from the March 1-15, 2012, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist 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.)