Greece – a country strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa which was for long toddling on the brink of default and insolvency – is preparing to begin bailout talks with its international creditors next week. The two sides are under enormous pressure to hammer out the rescue deal (worth up to 86 billion euros or $94 billion) before August 20, when Athens is scheduled to make a loan repayment of 3.2 billion euros to the European Central Bank (ECB) that it cannot currently afford.
Sharq daily contacted the Central Committee of the Communist Party (KKE) in Greece through email and posed questions on where the European country is heading. The KKE’s Central Committee has said that it aims to dismantle capitalism in the country, whereas Syriza* [a party born from a coalition of Eurocommunists] is opting for the rule of capitalism.
The following is the translation of a report bylined by Nozhan Etezad Saltaneh the daily published on July 25 on the KKE’s views on the state of affairs in the struggling country:
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) has labeled left-wing Syriza as an opportunist party which defends the interests of the capitalists as it tries to keep social-democracy in place and humanize the image of capitalism in the country.
Greece’s KKE, founded more than 90 years ago, is one of the key Communist parties in Europe. The party has a long proven track record of fights, among them, resistance against the invasion by Fascist forces – led by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy – of Greece [known as the Battle of Greece], fight against the dictatorship of the military junta in the 60s and 90s [known as the Greek military junta of 1967–74, or the Regime of the Colonels] and now the fight they have declared against the neoliberal capitalism and its agents.
The partyhas representatives in the Hellenic Parliament [the parliament of Greece] and the European Union. It does not favor parliamentary democracy* as the best way to make desirable changes and rejects it as a pure illusion. It has also appealed for Greece not to cooperate with the European Union which it views as reactionary [a reactionary apparatus which has at its core the interests of the monopolies] and anti-people.
Despite the fact that the EU has announced that it wants Greece to stay in the eurozone, the Communist Party in Greece maintains that Europe’s bourgeoisie supports the withdrawal [from the Eurozone] of Greece and similar economies, arguing that it [Europe’s bourgeoisie] wants to see the presence of stronger economies in the eurozone and the deletion of the weaker countries.
[…]
Syriza’s performance and its outlook
This government has offered valuable services to the system. The Syriza-led government has masked its compromise with the system by running on a leftist platform and hiding it [the compromise] behind an honorable mask. The party is pushing a false discourse. We are now at a juncture when opposition to the European Union should assume a radical form and result in rejection of efforts which lead to development of capitalism. But Syriza wants to see our country as part of an intergovernmental imperialistic coalition which has always drawn on unequal relations between countries.
On the referendum day, this government put an inappropriate question to a vote and then turned the ‘no’ vote to a ‘yes’ vote in favor of a harsher agreement. Syriza continues to exploit people’s demands and those of leftist forces to put on a popular and leftist face. The new agreement has created a situation as if the sins of the New Democracy and PASOK social democratic political parties – which were previously in power – had been forgiven.
This government taps into populist demagoguery and is also committed to making use of macro capital. By doing so, this party has managed to win the support of the Greek bourgeoisie and imperialistic centers outside Greece, including the US.
♦Forming a coalition with the US, France and Italy in which the government takes pride does not serve the people’s interests. In fact, such measures will drag the working class and the general public into disputes between the imperialists.Syriza is a left-wing political party in Greece, originally founded in 2004 as a coalition of left-wing and radical left parties. It is the largest party in the Hellenic Parliament, with party chairman Alexis Tsipras serving as Prime Minister of Greece.
♦A parliamentary democracy is a system of government in which citizens elect representatives to a legislative parliament to make the necessary laws and decisions for the country. This parliament directly represents the people.
In a parliamentary democracy, you have a Prime Minister, who is first elected as a member of parliament, then elected Prime Minister by the other members of the parliamentary legislature. However, the Prime Minister remains a part of the legislature. The legislative branch makes the laws, and thus the Prime Minister has a hand in law-making decisions. The Prime Minister works directly with other people in the legislature to write and pass these laws.
