OVER 10,000 workers from the Greek state corporations and organisations (power and electricity, telecommunications, post-office, water authorities etc) took part in a militant and defiant rally and march in Athens on Thursday afternoon against the privatisation programme of the government.
They marched through the Athens city centre to the Vouli (Greek parliament) square where the Finance Ministry is.
The dominant slogan of the march was ‘take the Accord and get out of here’, the Accord being the IMF/EC-imposed programme of savage cuts and privatisations, addressed to the government and the Prime Minister Yiorghos Papandreou.
There were large delegations of post office workers (over 1,500 from all over Greece), dockers from the ports of Piraeus and Elefsina, telecommunications, power and electricity workers, archaeologists, youth workers, water authority workers, railway workers and a contingent of workers from a very successful state quality dairy products plant in northern Greece that the government wants to shut down.
At the rally, the leaders of the large public sector trade unions castigated the government but refused to speak out for its overthrow.
This was noted with disgust by workers who shouted back that they know what the government are doing, they feel it in their pockets, and demanded from the union leaders what were they going to do about it.
On Thursday night in the Vouli square, about 3,000 youth and workers demonstrated against the government and the IMF/EC-imposed Accord number 2, to be voted upon by the Vouli at the end of this month.
But once again, the square was split between the upper and the lower parts doing different things; the upper part demonstrating and shouting slogans, the lower engaged in discussions, and at the meeting of the Popular Assembly disagreements led to an early conclusion.
The Assembly organised for last night another talk by academic economists.
In many districts of Athens, meetings are taking place in squares to set up committees and local assemblies.
Yesterday morning in the Vouli, Prime Minister Papandreou cynically admitted that Greece is under ‘guardianship’ for decades not just since the imposition of the IMF-EC Accord.
