On the eve of a crucial vote set for Sunday midnight in the Vouli (Greek parliament) over a new Austerity Measures Bill, the Greek Development Assistant Minister Maximos Kharakopoulos announced his resignation with a long statement citing milk imports as the reason for his action. But he said that he would vote for the government’s Bill.
Kharakopoulos’ constituency is an agricultural area in central Greece. It is worth stating some points of Kharakopoulos’ resignation statement, since it exposes the methods and aims of the savage Austerity Measures which the government pushes through the Vouli on the diktats of its troika overlords and creditors EC-IMF-ECB.
On the milk issue, Kharakopoulos states that it was a dictat of the OECD to impose milk imports on Greece and brand the 11-days old imported milk as ‘fresh’. This would be a ‘disaster’ for Greek dairy firms and ‘negative for the consumers’ Kharakopoulos comments.
He then states that he argued against milk imports ‘with sound arguments’ and with the ‘setting up of a scientific committee’, but all his proposals were rejected. He adds that, ‘suddenly we were told that the “fresh” tag for the imported milk was a Troika demand for the payment of the next (bail-out EC-IMF-ECB cash) tranche!’
Kharakopoulos also revealed that the new austerity measures Bill was only tabled to the Vouli last Friday midnight, just 24 hours before its was set to be debated ‘with express procedures’.
The public sector trade union confederation ADEDY and the opposition parties SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and KKE (Greek Communist Party) had call for a mass rally outside the Vouli on Sunday evening.
Doctors’ and the pharmacists’ association had also called for participation in the rally. The President of the Athens Medical Association Yiorghos Patoulis called on all doctors and pharmacists to form a ‘National Salvation Front for Public Health’.
The federation of state hospital workers POEDIN called just a four-hour stoppage for Monday. All last week pharmacists kept their business shut in a national protest. For last Sunday the Small Business National Association had organised a protest rally in central Athens.
The media trade unions carried out a 4-hour national stoppage last Saturday evening while the seafarers’ confederation PNO has called 48-hour ‘rolling’ national strikes starting Monday 6am.
Last Friday the leader of SYRIZA Alexis Tsipras broadcast from the Vouli a ‘message to Greek people’ stating that the Bill is a ‘social, economic and national crime against the people.’
Tsipras said that ‘the government, the troika and the local and foreign capital along with the media barons, have agreed to pick to the bone whatever has been left (in Greece) after three years of looting.’
Tsipras called the Bill ‘a new round of barbarism’ and cited the Bill’s main points as: to hand over the Greek banks to foreign speculative funds and to the Greek oligarchs; to impose a wage of 500 Euros per month; to annihilate what is left of the social security and pensions system and to destroy Greek dairies, agriculture and local shops and businesses such as pharmacists, bakers, taxi drivers.
Tsipras insisted that the Bill allows that the 30bn Euros ‘recapitalisation’ of the Greek banks, out of the bail-out money, would be paid by the Greek people and if returned that will be at a half their value.
Tsipras warned that government legislation to seal-off legally those responsible for ‘such crimes’ won’t hold. Tsipras made bold promises. He said that ‘the Austerity Measures Accords would be definitely and irrevocably abolished,’ and that a ‘SYRIZA government of social salvation’ would unstitch one by one all the diktats of sell-offs and of social destruction.’
His way of achieving this is through the May local and European Parliament elections where a government defeat will trigger off ‘rapid political developments’.
The Press Office of the KKE issued a statement in which it states that the main targets of the government’s Bill are ‘further wage reductions, annihilation of social security and pensions’ funds, and the destruction of small business such as bakeries, milk producers, pharmacists, bookshops and others.’
For the KKE ‘these are EE’s diktats’ regardless of any austerity measures accords. ‘The parties that support the EC such as SYRIZA mock the people,’ states the KKE and says that there should be “no trust to the governments and parties of the EC’.
The KKE says that the years ahead would be even harder for the people and calls ‘for organisation, regrouping, militant answer, and a popular alliance of workers, self-employed, farmers, youth and women against the common enemy which is the EC, the monopolies and their parties.’
In a separate statement the KKE’s trade union organisation PAME says that the 9 April general strike ‘must demand’ a national minimum wage of 751 Euros and national labour collective agreements.
In its proclamation the anti-capitalist formation ANTARSYA states that ‘we must carry out a fight against the Bill and the Euro Ministries’ meeting next Tuesday with strikes and mobilisations, without a wait, without illusions for salvation through the ballot-box.’
The proclamation calls on workers ‘to leave behind the treacherous trades unions bureaucracy.’ It castigates both the GSEE (Greek TUC) and ADEDY for envisaging the 9 April one-day general strike as a ‘blank shot’ and states that ‘it’s up to us to make 9 April a river of rage which will unite all separate struggles.’
The ANTARSYA proclamation proposes a ‘programme of rupture with capital, for withdrawal from the Euro and the EC, which will get us out of the crisis for the benefit of workers.’
The main points of the programme are listed as: overthrow of the coalition government and any government of such policies; the abolition of austerity accords and laws; the write-off of the national debt; and the nationalisation of the banks and all big business without compensation and under workers-popular control.
Neither the KKE nor ANTARSYA are putting forward a socialist programme of Popular Assemblies (Soviets), for the organisation of an indefinite political general strike and for the kicking out of the trades union bureaucracy, and do not mention the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
These parties, along with SYRIZA, have abandoned all hope of revolutionary change as they consider the working class and youth ‘not up to it’.
In its statement the Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) point out that precisely because these parties do not recognise the revolutionary essence of the worldwide capitalist crisis and because they do not trust workers as a revolutionary class, they refuse to call for the overthrow of the capitalist state.
The RCL emphasises that, ‘these parties’ political bankruptcy and reactionary stand, in the midst of the biggest crisis of capitalism, makes all the more urgent and immediate the building of the RCL as the leadership of workers and youth for the socialist revolution.’
