The CC of the KKE met to examine the election result. In its statement, it salutes the thousands of members, friends and supporters of the party and KNE, allies and voters who fought, mobilized and contributed to the strengthening of the KKE.
The KKE received 338,138 votes (5.5%) and saw a rise in its percentage (+1%), votes (61,000) and MPs (+3) in relation to its percentage, votes and MPs elected in the elections of June 2012. In these elections it had 15 MPs elected.
The CC of the KKE assesses that the change in government and specifically the new SYRIZA government do not constitute a political change in favour of the people. The coalition government of “leftwing” SYRIZA and the “rightwing” nationalist party ANEL, which has been on the cards for a while (from before the elections) will continue the anti-people commitments of the country to the EU and creditors, ΝΑΤΟ and will continue in the service of big capital and of course this will provide breathing space for the bourgeois political system that seeks to assimilate the people more deeply into the system. The bourgeois political system will attempt to achieve this via its recomposition and at a crucial moment for the people and its movement.
The KKE, consistent with what it said before the elections, is not going to support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the rallying of forces, which it carried out in this phase, to do what it promised the people to do. So that there is a strong workers’-people’s opposition in favour of the people in parliament as well, with its proposals, but above all in the movement in order to strengthen the people’s alliance today and for the future.
The KKE calls on those who voted for the KKE, because they appreciated its firmness, consistency and selflessness, its militancy in the struggle for the interests of the working people, even if they do not all agree with every position of the KKE to continue and to join with us in the daily struggles and more generally in the fight for the people to take complete power.
1.The CC salutes the thousands of members, friends and supporters of the party and KNE, allies and voters who fought, mobilized and contributed to the strengthening of the KKE. The KKE saw a rise in its percentage (+1%), votes (61,000) and MPs (+3) in relation to its percentage, votes and MPs elected in the elections of June 2012. In these elections it had 15 MPs elected. The positive trend for rallying around the KKE, the recovery of lost votes and the winning of new ones has been confirmed.
In particular, we want to salute the voters who voted for the KKE for the first time, because they appreciated its firmness, consistency and selflessness, its militancy in the struggle for the interests of the working people, even if they do not all agree with every position of the KKE.
We call on those who took the positive step and voted for the KKE for the first time to continue and to meet with us in the daily struggles, in the trade unions, the workplaces, the youth, the movement. To join with us to struggle for urgent demands, the recovery of the losses and more generally in the fight for changes at the level of power. It is an immediate priority, responsibility and duty for the party to strengthen its relations, from the Central Committee to the level of each Party Organization, with all those workers, pensioners and young people who took the step and stood at the KKE’s side, strengthened it in the elections, widening its bonds with new working class and popular forces.
The factors that shaped the election results are not just to be found in the last month, in the election campaign period itself. The intense ideological, political and organizational work of the entire party and KNE in order to ideologically reinforce our ranks, our wider periphery, that preceded the election period are of particular importance and primacy. The KKE’s stability, particularly since 2012 and despite its significant losses, in promoting its strategy, the stable front of confrontation against the ND-PASOk government as well as against SYRIZA, exposing it constant mutations, contributed significantly to today’s results. The valuable experience from this activity must become and integral and permanent element in the work of all the Party Base Organizations, as well as of the organizations of KNE.
2. The election results in general express, via the ballot box, the great discontent and anger of the people towards the parties of ND and PASOK and those that cooperated with them, those who condemned them to poverty and unemployment in the period of the economic crisis.
The elections results were formed under the pressure of a strong current that demanded an immediate change of government. The rationale “which government-which negotiator” was the prevalent one, always inside the anti-people walls of the EU, remote from the real problems of the people.
The vote for SYRIZA was chiefly a vote that rejected the previous anti-people government of ND-PASOK. It was a vote that was characterized by reduced demands and also illusions about the character of the EU. It was not a vote that demanded the satisfaction of the real needs of the workers and people today. To a degree it was a conditional vote, a vote that will be reviewed in relation to the government’s course, which as regards the contradictory interests of capital and the workers will side with the former.
To a great extent it expresses the false hope that the new SYRIZA government can follow a pro-people political line. The KKE assessed and assesses that the formation today of a SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government will operate within the framework of the EU one-way street, the retreats and compromises, the commitments to big capital, the monopolies, the EU and NATO, with the negative implications for our people and country. The new coalition government will pick up the baton of the anti-people political line in order to safeguard, via the Draghi package as well, liquidity for capital, without restoring the people’s losses from the crisis.
3. The change in government and specifically the new SYRIZA government does not constitute a political change in favour of the people. The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government will continue the anti-people commitments of the country to the EU and creditors and of course this will provide breathing space for the bourgeois political system that seeks to assimilate the people more deeply into the system. The bourgeois political system will attempt to achieve this via its recomposition and at a crucial moment for the people and its movement. SYRIZA has already admitted that the next day there will be a program that will be formed in agreement with the creditors. This program, even if it is not called a memorandum or does not have the formal appearance of today’s memorandum, will contain anti-people conditions.
SYRIZA’s program is not pro-worker, pro-people. It is a program that, both regarding its strategic directions and its specific proposals for its four-year term, will operate in the framework of serving the interests of the monopoly groups, the strategy of the EU. This is a program that tells the people to forget about taking back all that they have lost and only promises some crumbs in the manner of the “poor house” to those who live in extreme poverty. And these crumbs will evaporate due to the anti-people political line as a whole. The SYRIZA program, as regards the majority of workers and popular families, will share out poverty and unemployment to even more people.
SYRIZA has also stated that it will observe Greece’s commitments to NATO, the strategic alliance with the USA. This is particularly dangerous, in a period when NATO and the EU are developing even further into factors that undermine the country’s sovereign rights, sharpen the competition for markets and raw materials and lead to the gathering of war clouds in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, Ukraine, with the involvement of Greece as well.
4. The change of government in Greece is being utilized by bourgeois political forces inside the country, the Eurozone and also internationally. These are forces that want a more relaxed monetary and fiscal policy as tool that will help them escape the stagnation of the levels of production. The KKE at its 19th Congress had underlined the prospect of a differentiation in the formula of bourgeois management, which arises from the need to deal with the hesitation and caution of the business groups in investing capital that is at the moment sitting idle, accumulated as it was in the period of capitalist growth. This will occur on the condition that class exploitation is intensified, taxation on capital is reduced and finally that the average of rate of profit increases. This is in any case is the much touted “re-starting” of the capitalist economy.
SYRIZA in particular systematically fostered the misleading and entirely false position that the EU can change in a positive direction in favour of the people, because it is moving to a less restrictive political line, to the so-called quantitative easing. For this reason, it celebrated the Draghi measures and the buying of state bonds by the ECB. Such a change however is not a pro-people one. It is in the interests of the monopoly groups, banks, industrialists, those to whom the funding packages will be directed to and which will burden the workers once again.
The change in government also symbolizes and serves the pressure of the USA, France and Italy on the German government in order to change the apportionment of the burdens and profits, in relation to the management of the indebted Eurozone states. SEV (The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises) also supported this direction in the election period.
5. The overall election result bears witness to the course of the reformation of the bourgeois political system, which began in the two elections of 2012, in conditions of the deep capitalist economic crisis. This reformation is necessary for the political power of the capitalists, in conditions when, due to the new massive wave of unemployment and poverty, the great political ability of the traditional social-democratic and liberal bourgeois parties to manipulate working class and popular masses has weakened, with the result that the normal rotation of one-party governments between the two parties does not function. The reformation of social-democracy proceeded very rapidly. In essence PASOK has been replaced by SYRIZA as a party of government, without the latter achieving the level of PASOK’s former influence. The reformation of the liberal current is still underway, despite the significant splitting off of nationalist and fascist forces that it has already undergone.
6. As regards the KKE, the result was formed in conditions when its forces were buffeted by extorting dilemmas regarding the existence of a “good” and “bad” path inside the Eurozone, the prospect of a “leftwing” change inside the EU, or illusions that an alleged “left” government of SYRIZA will change the trajectory of developments in favour of the popular forces.
A crucial negative factor for the correlation of forces, and consequently for the political influence of the KKE, was and is the situation regarding the mass participation in and orientation of the labour-people’s movement. As long as the movement and the workers’ participation in it remain in the doldrums, despite the initiatives of the KKE and other radical forces, class conscious forces, the more the rationale of waiting, passivity, and the quest for saviours and nonexistent solutions from above will prevail. In the course of events, the working class and popular strata, due to reality itself, will reconsider the predictions and assessments of the KKE, will join forces with the KKE for the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement and the strengthening of the people’s social alliance.
7. Despite the positive trend for rallying around the KKE, the overall correlation of forces remains negative. The election result does not express a tendency for the emancipation of working class and popular forces from the EU, the path of capital and the interests of the monopolies.
An expression of this negative of correlation of forces was third place achieved by the criminal Nazi Golden Dawn (GD), a party with specific criminal murderous activity, a party that was formed by the mechanisms of the system. It maintains a high percentage, despite the losses it had in actual votes. Particular responsibility for the electoral percentage of GD belongs both to the ND-PASOK government that fostered anti-communisms, the theory of the two extremes, the scape-goating of immigrants as well as to the blurred “anti-memorandum” line promoted by SYRIZA which exonerates the people’s real opponents, the capitalists. This specific criminal fascist organization developed on this ideological and political terrain. The KKE remains the stable opponent of fascism, precisely because the KKE opposes capitalism as a whole, the system that creates fascism, nationalism and racism.
The system, the monopolies and their power possess further reserves in order to trap the popular strata in a period when the process for the reformation of the political scene has not finished.
The line of counterattack and rupture with the capitalist path of development, the EU and against the policies that support this path through assimilation and passivity must be strengthened among the working class, the youth and the movement. Today the people face the permanent memoranda of the EU, the goals for competitiveness and the new recovery of capital’s profitability that lead to the even greater bankruptcy of the people and can not solve the sharpening popular problems, such as unemployment. The SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government and the other parties serve this anti-people path and attempt to prettify it in the eyes of the people.
8. The KKE, consistent with what it said before the elections, is not going to support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the rallying of forces, which it carried out in this phase, to do what it promised the people to do. So that there is a strong workers’-people’s opposition in favour of the people in parliament as well, with its proposals, but above all in the movement in order to strengthen the people’s alliance today and for the future. In order to strengthen the struggles against the EU, the permanent memoranda, the monopolies, capital and its power. So that the workers recover their major losses from the crisis period. So that the monopoly groups and capital, not the salaried workers and unemployed again, pay for whatever crumbs are given to the extremely poor.
The KKE will increase its efforts and initiatives regarding the sharpening problems of the people, for the relief of the unemployed and popular households. It will strengthen its efforts for the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement, for the development of people’s solidarity, for the construction of the people’s alliance against the monopolies and the capitalist system.
The KKE will continue to promote amongst the people and struggle for the only pro-people way out: with the people in power, truly sovereign, capable of choosing their own government, the government of workers’-people’s power, abolishing capitalist ownership. Only the socialization of the means of production and infrastructure can support another path of development for the people’s needs, with central planning, with entirely different criteria for the distribution of resources. This is the path that will lend a pro-people content to the disengagement from the EU and the unilateral cancellation of the debt. So that the people can develop mutually beneficial relations with other peoples and countries.
The CC of the KKE
26/1/2015
