Statement by the Revolutionary Marxist League Greek section of the International Committee of the 4th International
TODAY, Wednesday 8 July, the Greek Finance Minister Efklides Tsakalotos applied to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) asking for a three-year ‘loan or programme’. The funds required were not stated.
This is a treacherous and wretched application for a third Austerity Accord, a third bail-out, with the Tsipras government accepting all the barbaric measures demanded by the EC-IMF-ECB troika.
The Tsakalotos application proposes the implementation of austerity measures from this Monday ‘including tax reform related measures, pension related measures’ and ‘additional actions’. That means less taxes for business and the rich, more for workers and poor farmers, along with pension cuts and the smashing of the state pension system. And this is not by any means all.
Tsipras in his Wednesday morning address to the European Parliament referred to a 47-page document of severe austerity measures that he said had been negotiated between his government and the EC-IMF-ECB troika. In the ESM application, Tsakalotos states that, ‘the Greek government will on Thursday 9 July at the latest set out its proposals for a comprehensive and specific reform agenda for assessment by the three institutions to be presented to the Eurogroup.’
These proposals, over and above more taxes for workers and the poor, include wholesale privatisations, attacks on labour rights and huge spending cuts on health, education and social services. It is a comprehensive programme of class war for the destruction of the working class, youth, farmers and small business.
In his speech today, Tsipras stated the well known fact, that the money of the previous two bail-outs went to ‘the European and Greek banks’. Yet in his application, Tsakalotos declares that ‘the Loan will be used to meet Greece’s debt obligations and to ensure stability of the financial system.’
And he emphasises that: ‘Greece is committed to honour its financial obligations to all of its creditors in a full and timely manner.’
In the ESM application, Tsakalotos does not mention the central point in all the SYRIZA rhetoric, which happens to also be an IMF condition, the ‘haircut’ or ‘restructuring’ of the Greek debt.
Tsakalotos can only plead that the negotiations sometime in the future would lead to measures, ‘so that the official sector-related debt becomes both sustainable and viable over the long term.’
Tsipras is turning the ‘NO’ vote of last Sunday’s referendum into a ‘YES’! He initiated an agreement with the defeated capitalist parties of the ‘YES’ vote and has formed a reactionary front with them. He is becoming himself the bearer of dictatorial and counter-revolutionary measures so that a third Austerity Accord can be imposed!
Instead of resisting the obvious new conspiracies to overthrow his government, Tsipras is in coalition with those who organised a constitutional deviation (through the President of the Greek Republic) and a coup (through the riot police and the army).
Greek people must be immediatey mobilised in an indefinite political general strike, involving occupations and blockades, to cancel the barbaric agreement being prepared by the treacherous SYRIZA leaders and by the European Commission gangsters. Rallies and demonstrations should be called in Athens and in all Greek cities and villages.
SYRIZA deputies must be told not to vote for the agreement in the Vouli (Greek parliament).
The anti-labour bureaucracy at the GSEE (Greek TUC) must be thrown out and a national Workers Conference must be held at the GSEE building.
The only way forward for workers, youth, farmers and small businesses, is to stop a new austerity accord and to avoid the absolute poverty and wretchness of a capitalist bankruptcy, by organising the struggle for the overthrow of the SYRIZA-ANEL government which forgot its promises and has twice betrayed the vote of the Greek people.
We are for withdrawal from EU and NATO, for the overthrow of capitalism, for a workers’ and poor farmers’ government. This will write off the debt, nationalise the banks and big business under workers’ control and management, and bring in a planned socialist economy.
This will call on the workers of the EU to struggle to bring down the EU and bring in a United Socialist States of Europe.
NO TO THE NEW TSIPRAS-EC AUSTERITY AGREEMENT!
OVERTHROW THE SYRIZA-ANEL GOVT!
FOR A WORKERS’ AND POOR FARMERS’ GOVT!
EVERYONE TO THE MASS RALLIES!
Statement of the Revolutionary Marxist League Athens Wednesday 8 July 2015.
