WORKERS and youth in Greece are set to deliver the biggest electoral blow ever this Sunday against the two main capitalist parties, the conservatives and the social-democrats.
These are the two parties which, in the last two years, have carried out the barbaric austerity measures dictated by the EC and the IMF.
Although the electoral system scandalously favours the two main political parties, it is clear from the short election period of the last two weeks that it is most likely the conservatives of the New Democracy and the social-democrats of PASOK, will fail to win a majority in the 300 seats Vouli (Greek parliament).
Both the EC and IMF overlords have publicly declared their support for a new coalition government of the two main capitalist parties, with a strong hint to include the present Prime Minister, banker Lucas Papademos.
But such is the hatred and fury of workers, youth and the self-employed in Greece, the outcome of Sunday’s general election will sky rocket the political crisis by delivering a deathblow to the two main political parties up till now.
PASOK, which won the general election comfortably in 2009, stands to be annihilated especially in the main cities.
Two new bourgeois political formations have been created as a result of the political crisis of the two main parties.
Their role will be to provide the necessary parliamentary seats so that another counter-revolutionary coalition government is formed.
Both the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) party and the Greek Communist Party (KKE) are predicted to make large gains.
According to EC statistics, youth unemployment in Greece last January reached 51.2 per cent, the highest in Europe, overtaking Spain with 51.1 per cent. In reality, the figures are higher. Total unemployment is now nearly 25 per cent with the unemployed being able to receive just 300 euros a month, and for only a year.
The imperialist agency OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) published figures that admitted a 25 per cent average wage cut for workers in Greece last year. OECD want a further wage cut of between 15-20 per cent this year.
In the Cabinet meeting last Wednesday, the Greek unelected Prime Minister Lucas Papademos announced a detailed economic programme, dictated by the conditions attached to the 130bn euros bailout loan to Greece by the EC and IMF. These, Papademos demanded, are the tasks of the new government.
Along with this counter-revolutionary programme, Papademos’ Cabinet approved the first 18bn euros as ‘recapitalisation’ to the collapsed Greeks banks.
The bosses’ organisations are demanding that the trade unions and workers must accept new conditions which include 15-25 per cent pay cuts, ‘flexible’ working hours and conditions and mass sackings.
These barbaric measures are being accepted by the big trade unions, such as the one at the National Bank, showing the treacherous role of the trade union bureaucracy.
But there is huge opposition to these betrayals; national strikes have already been declared against wage cuts and mass sackings for May 15 by local government workers, garment workers, shop assistants, engineers and building workers.
Whichever bourgeois government would be formed after the general election, however weak and unstable, it would have to carry out the EC-IMF dictated counter-revolution against the Greek working class and youth whose confidence was clearly demonstrated in the Athens mass May Day rally.
