No toleration for the new agreement reached between the government and the EU to extend the memorandum

No toleration for the new agreement reached between the government and the EU to extend the memorandum

Statement of the PB of the CC of the KKE

The new agreement, which the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government signed with the EU, ECB and IMF, is both in form and in essence an extension of the memorandum and the commitments provided for in it, a continuation of the anti-people political line of the previous governments of ND and PASOK. This agreement and the list of “reforms” include all the measures that are negative for the workers. These are measures that were taken by capital, its governments, together with the EU in conditions of the economic crisis, measures that assisted the recovery of capitalist profitability. I.e. all those things that bled the Greek people dry in the previous years and which they had fought against: strict supervision and evaluation by the troika which is now called the “three institutions”, observance and extension of the anti-worker and anti-people directions.

This agreement confirms that the negotiations even the so-called “tough” ones, which are conducted inside the framework of the EU with capitalist recovery as their goal, consistently have anti-people outcomes. The alleged “proud” negotiation was an advertising scam.

If there is any revision of the previous program, e.g. lower primary surpluses, it will not be done in order to relieve the people, to increase salaries, pensions, social benefits but in order 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.

For this reason ND, PASOK, other parties and forces that support the system, like SEV (Hellenic Federation of Enterprises), and backed the anti-people political line in previous years, welcomed the government’s agreement as being something positive.

The SYRIZA-ANEL government presents the new agreement as a result of the people’s will and the people’s support for the government’s political line. It seeks to deceive and foist the responsibility for the compromises and anti-people agreements with the EU onto the people. It is trying to manipulate the labour-people’s movement, to transform the people into the government’s cheerleaders, to convince them that they must continue their sacrifices and compromise with crumbs of bread.

There must be no support or toleration for the government that continues on the same path of commitments to the EU and the profitability of the monopolies. For this reason it labels the needs of capital and the path that serves this as a “national” matter. However this is not in the people’s interests. In any case, the people have experience that they must use i.e the “national goals” of the governments and capital have always ended up in the workers and people’s rights being sacrificed to a great extent.

Those who had hoped for something better must not become disillusioned, they must react. What is even more important is that they must not give up on the goal of really abolishing the memoranda, the application laws, the anti-people restructurings. They must not give up on the struggle to recover their losses.

The desire of the people to be rid of the anti-people political line that is implemented via the memoranda, to be rid of the measures and supervisors, can acquire real content when the people struggle to regain what they have lost, with the following immediate demands:

- Immediate measures to relieve the families from the popular strata and to protect the unemployed.

- Return of the 13th and 14th salary, compulsory implementation of Collective Bargaining agreements and the abolition of the measures that attack labour rights.

- A real immediate return via legislation of the minimum wage to at least 751 euros for all, without exceptions and asterisks, as a basis for further wage increases.

- The return of the 13th and 14th pensions and the abolition of all the anti-people measures that reduced the pensions and increased the retirement age. At the same time they must demand the return of what has been stolen from the social-security funds’ reserves and that the plutocracy and state immediately meet their payment obligations to the funds.

- The liberation of the popular families from the heavy taxes, the abolition of ENFIA (the new property tax) and the solidarity tax, the abolition of VAT on basic products consumed by the people, the abolition of VAT and other taxes on heating oil and natural gas, the increase of the tax threshold to 40,000 euros for each family and a simultaneous increase of the taxation on capital.

- No seizures of first or second homes of families from the popular strata. Cancellation of interests on debts, drastic reduction of the loan repayments of the popular households.

- An increase of spending for exclusively public and free education, healthcare and welfare.

The working class and people can achieve these things by organizing their struggle and alliance, fighting for another development path that will serve the needs of the people today, with disengagement from the EU, unilateral cancellation of the debts, with the socialization of the monopolies and with the people holding the reins of power.

This is the way for the Greek people to take a truly proud and dignified stance.

The KKE calls on the people of Athens, Piraeus and the Attica region to the demonstration, on Friday the 27 of February at 7 pm, in Syntagma Sq. The main speaker will be Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the GS of the CC of the KKE.

The PB of the CC of the KKE

Athens 24/2/2015

KKE