THOUSANDS of workers and students took part in marches held in several Greek cities last Thursday evening against any agreement which will continue the austerity policies between the Greek government and the EC-IMF-ECB troika.
In Athens, over 10,000 workers participated in a Greek Communist Party demonstration and another 1,000 marched through the city centre to the EU offices, organised by several trade union branches, chanting slogans for the withdrawal of Greece from the eurozone and for writing off the public debt.
The Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Marxist League (RML) distributed their leaflet calling for a general strike against austerity and for the overthrow of the SYRIZA-ANEL government which negotiates new Austerity Accords.
The RML is calling for a national conference at the end of the month of all trade unions and militants opposed to austerity and privatisations to organise the fight to overthrow the government and capitalism by bringing in a workers’ and small farmers’ government.
There were no riot police attending the marches but police buses and riot police squads were positioned in front of the EU offices building in Athens. The Public Order Minister Yiannis Panousis stated that ‘police are there to protect democracy’. The SYRIZA youth have officially demanded from the SYRIZA government that Panousis should be removed.
On Thursday, the ERT state TV and radio network, that was shut down in 2013 on the troika’s orders, started transmissions again, a great victory for the sacked ERT workers who fought tirelessly for two years. All sacked workers were reinstated but their union POSPERT said that the government is to run the network as previously, as a government mouthpiece.
POSPERT and several SYRIZA deputies objected to the appointment of the new ERT Managing Director, Labis Tagmatarkhis, well known for his anti-working class methods and close contacts with the bourgeois newspaper and media barons.
But despite its criticism POSPERT participated in a fiesta at ERT on Thursday night in the presence of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. The ERT workers are the only ones to be reinstated so far. The Greek SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government have promised that the sacked Finance Ministry women cleaners as well as several thousand teachers and university administrative workers will be re-employed.
On Thursday the Athens stock exchange shot up by 8.2 per cent with bank shares up by 17 per cent as a deal between the Greek government and the EC-IMF-ECB troika looked likely. By Friday midday, Athens stock exchange shares were plummeting by over 3.5 per cent as it emerged that Greece and the EC-IMF-ECB lenders are still in disagreement.
