All over Europe people are talking about the political developments in Greece. However the participation in the elections on the 20^th of September was only 57%. Why did do many voters stay at home?

Answer: The abstention to a large extent expressed discontent with the bourgeois political system, a feeling of indignation, disappointment that was intensified amongst sections of workers and the youth by the 7-month SYRIZA-ANEL government. There was the feeling that “nothing can happen”, “nothing changes”. Of course, the abstention which also had an impact on the KKE’s electoral strength is not an active stance of opposition and resistance to the current situation and the causes that created it.

In addition, the abstention is related to the difficulties a section of the people have in terms of traveling, because they face serious problems related to poverty. From this standpoint, the recent governments bear responsibilities as they have not taken measures to facilitate this, as the KKE has repeatedly demanded.

We call on all those who in the end chose to abstain, to think about the fact that all the small and major battles, together with that of the elections, can and must be used in order to create fissures in the current negative correlation of forces, in order to concentrate forces with the aim of overthrowing the system as a whole.

SYRIZA as a party of government at last tried to react against the EU’s austerity directives. Is it not positive that Tsipras remains leader of the government?

Answer: The parties are not to be judged by their proclamations but by their deeds. Tsipras and SYRIZA did not negotiate for the interests of the people, but for the interests of the monopoly groups, which wanted ready money in order to increase their profitability. It carried out a 100% anti-people negotiation which in the end led to the 3^rd memorandum that was adopted also with the votes of ND, PASOK and POTAMI. The 3^rd memorandum includes harsh anti-worker anti-people measures, also maintaining the 2 previous memoranda and their over 400 anti-people application laws. Now, with the support of the other bourgeois parties, it is going to transform parliament into a slaughterhouse for the remaining labour and people’s rights.

Fascist Golden Dawn possesses a stable body of voters, even if the party’s leadership is on trial, and although they do not conceal the fact that they adopt terrorism against leftwing people and immigrants. How do you explain the strong influence of the fascists?

Answer: The election results in general express the passivity and strengthening conservative trends amongst a large section of the people. The fact that the criminal Nazi Golden Dawn (which has links with the state apparatus and exploits poverty and unemployment) has formed a stable level of political influence is a negative feature. All the other parties bear serious responsibilities i.e. the governmental party SYRIZA, the official opposition of ND, as well as other minor opposition parties, which in essence did not wage an open political battle against Golden Dawn either in the election period or in the previous period.

The KKE will continue to raise the banner of struggle against Nazism-Fascism and its representatives today in Greece, who poison the workers’-people’s consciousness, organize assault battalions, set up slave-trading offices to provide cheap workers for the employers, despite the effort to present a more “law abiding” visage, due to the criminal prosecutions that are underway.

The KKE was able to maintain its electoral percentage that it has received in January, but in absolute terms it received 35,000 fewer votes. In these elections, you had focused on the rupture with capitalism being necessary and that a socialist future is possible. Was this correct?

Answer: Lets examine this. In these lections “leftwing” SYRIZA lost about 300,000 votes, rightwing ND lost 200,000 votes, the governmental ally of SYRIZA, nationalist ANEL, lost 100,000 votes etc. They did not talk about socialism in their programmes and positions, but they received fewer votes. Other parties, like “Popular Unity”, created by forces that had departed from SYRIZA, promoting a Keynesian social-democratic programme, with its “solution” of returning to a national currency, capsized and did not reach the 3% election threshold to enter parliament.

The ideological-political confrontation is hard and the KKE on a daily basis, in every political battle (including the elections), must tell the people the truth and promote its political proposal for workers’-people’s power, with socialization of the monopolies, central planning and disengagement from the EU-NATO in order to inform the workers and create the preconditions for the overthrow of capitalist barbarity, paving the way for and contributing to the maturation of the subjective factor.

Every form bourgeois management leads to anti-people policies. Consequently, the necessity of socialism is the central issue and emerges from the very impasses of the capitalist mode of production that creates crises, unemployment, wars. This necessity arises from the fact that the material preconditions for the creation of a new society, with the exploitation of man by man, exists.

The new government will continue with the immediate implementation of the 3^rd memorandum. How will the KKE contribute to the organization of the resistance?

Answer: The KKE maintained 5.5% and had 15 MPs re-elected to Parliament, put forward its positions in the factories, workplaces, popular neighbourhoods, won over young workers, The KKE, consistent with what it said before the elections, is not going to support or tolerate the new government. It will utilize the actual rallying of forces to do what it promised to the people: to be a strong workers’ and people’s opposition in the Parliament and above all in the movement, to strengthen the People’s Alliance that will fight concerning all problems of the people but at the same time willl pave the way for a confrontation against the monopolies and capitalism in their entirety. Our aim is, through the regroupment of the labour and people’s movement, for the majority of the people and the workers, the youth, regardless of what they voted for, not to submit to the anti-people measures and to reject the claims of the government and the bourgeois opposition that the people  consented to the implementation of the memorandum. The KKE will continue to fight for the political emancipation of the workers and the people, following the line of class struggle for the overthrow of the system.

02.10.2015