THE workers’ occupation of the Greek State TV and Radio (ERT) has led to the collapse of the Greek tripartite government.
Foris Kouvelis, the leader of the Democratic Left, one of the junior government partners, stated late on Thursday night that his party’s ministers ‘are being withdrawn’ from the government.
The Greek right-wing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras broadcast a TV and radio statement past Thursday midnight, in which he stated that his government intends to carry on in a two-party coalition with the social-democratic party PASOK.
Samaras’ party and PASOK command 153 parliamentary deputies, a majority of just three in the Vouli (Greek parliament), although a few independent parliamentary deputies said that they would support the government.
Samaras insists that the order of the Council of State (Greek High Court) gave him the right to shut down ERT, sack all of its 2,800 employees and set up a new state TV network offering three-month contracts on ‘flexible’ working conditions to those who are willing.
The ERT workers’ union POSPERT issued a statement rejecting Samaras’ edict and calling on workers and youth to support the ERT occupation as it entered its 11th day on Friday.
About 200 journalists and media workers staged a protest on Thursday evening at the Council of State.
Both the European Commission’s Finance Commissioner Olli Rehn and the IMF have declared their total opposition to a general election which they say would be disastrous for Greece.
The Greek bourgeois press have printed stories that the EU and the IMF will ‘withhold’ bail-out money from Greece if a general election is called – so much for elections as the highest expression of democracy!
Despite the treachery of the trades union bureaucracy of the GSEE (Greek TUC), who refuse to call an indefinite general strike, and of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), who refuse calls for strikes and the overthrow of the government, the mass action of Greek workers and youth united at the centre of resistance at ERT have smashed the tripartite coalition government.
This development vindicates the Revolutionary Marxist League’s (RML – the Greek Trotskyists) insistence, as well as some trade union leaders, that the fight at ERT will be won by a struggle to overthrow the government.
The RML called on all workers to stage a massive rally at ERT yesterday to get rid of the coalition government, which is a parliamentary junta, and go forward to a workers’ and small farmers’ government based on trade unions and Popular Assemblies.
But it is clear in Samara’s broadcast that the counter-revolution on EC-IMF-ECB orders is seeking to organise a new two-party coalition government to smash the ERT occupation and consolidate the parliamentary junta’s rule through decree.
There is no doubt that the working class will take action against these counter-revolutionary plots and move to sweep away the political junta of Samaras to bring in a workers’ and small farmers’ government.
