TENS of thousands of students took part in two days of action in Greece last Wednesday and Thursday against the government’s proposed Higher Education Bill and its plans to revise the Greek Constitution.
These moves aim to dismantle and privatise free state education and afford the armed riot police the right to go into universities.
The students’ occupation of some 70 per cent of all university departments and technical colleges is now in its fifth week.
At the beginning of each week students call a general meeting in their departments, discuss the situation and a vote on continuing the occupation is taken. On average, the votes are 75 per cent for occupation and 25 per cent against.
During the week students organise pickets of public buildings, leafleting and meetings with trade unions to convince them to come out on strike.
Last Wednesday the student organisation of the KKE (Greek Communist Party) organised an impressive demonstration in Athens of some 10,000 university and technical college students.
They marched to the Vouli (Parliament) shouting slogans for a ‘people’s education’ and against the policies of the right-wing New Democracy government and the opposition PASOK party of Social Democrats.
The PASOK leadership support the privatisation of education but have withdrawn from the alliance they had with the government under the pressure of the students’ movement and their own student organisation.
A contingent of PAME workers (Communist Party’s trade union organisation) took part in the march.
PAME have been calling for support for the students’ struggle, but they have refused to call for strike action. They have not even brought a single trade union banner on the students’ demonstrations.
Last Thursday, the students’ Athens occupation co-ordination committee and the university teachers federation POSDEP organised a rally at the Polytechnic.
This was followed by a mass march of more than 15,000 students, school and university teachers, and contingents of school students and parents that proceeded to the Vouli.
All along the march scores of armed riot police squadrons were provocatively positioned in the side streets.
When, at the end of the march, students showered them with fruit, they were quick to attack with tear gas and noise-and-lightning grenades.
Earlier in the day, the Athens Public Prosecutor had summoned the leadership of the POSDEP to warn them that they would be held responsible, as organisers of the marches, for any possible damage to property.
The President of POSDEP, Athens Polytechnic Prof Lazaros Apekis, protested to the Public Prosecutor. He said the prosecutor should investigate the police and the Public Order Minister instead.
The General Secretary of the OLME secondary school teachers’ union Manolis Kaloimiris, refused to meet the Public Prosecutor.
POSDEP are now in the third week of their indefinite national strike against the government’s plans.
OLME staged a 24-hour national strike last Thursday and they are set for another one on February 22, the day a first vote will be taken on the revision of Article 16 of the Greek Constitution.
Students and teachers are due to stage yet another two-day action this Wednesday and Thursday.
Last Thursday was also a day of action for so-called ‘short-term workers’, whose union organised a 24-hour national strike in protest of the government’s appeal to the High Court to annul the decision of the lower courts backing their demands for permanent job contracts and decent wages.
Thousands of angry short-term workers and their supporters besieged the High Court and then marched to the Vouli.
Inside the High Court, the Public Prosecutor Yiorghos Sanidas, who was appointed by the New Democracy government last year, made a highly political speech attacking everyone except the government; the lower court judges who had backed the short-term workers, the GSEE (Greek trade union confederation), the opposition parties and the European Commission.
The latter has told the Greek government to offer proper permanent job contracts to short-term state employees.
Sanidas’ speech has provoked an outcry from opposition parliamentary deputies. The leader of the Coalition of the Left party A Alavanos described Sanidas’ speech as ‘a judiciary and constitutional coup’.
The national co-ordination committee of short-term workers declared that they ‘will fight to the end’ and called upon the government to honour the courts’ decisions and ‘offer proper jobs contracts to all’.
They are set to organise further mobilisations over the next few weeks.
