The municipal and regional elections were held in Greece on the 18^th of May a week before the elections for the EU parliament. The country is divided up into 13 regions and 325 municipalities. Political parties are not allowed to directly participate in these elections. The KKE participated in the elections with the name “People’s Rally” nationwide and with the red carnation as its symbol in the 13 regions and the overwhelming majority of the municipalities.

Although the counting of the votes has not been completed, it seems that the KKE has received a significant increase in the regions, approaching 9%. In Attica, which is the country’s largest region and includes Athens and Piraeus, ‘People’s Rally” reached 10.6%, while it received significant percentages of over 10% in the Northern Aegean (14.7%), in the Ionian Islands (11.4%), in Thessaly (10.4%).

In addition, it received more than 10% in dozens of municipalities and at the moment will participate in the 2^nd round of the elections in 4 cities, Patras (the country’s 4^th largest city), Ikaria, Petroupolis and Haidari. In Greece’s largest municipality, Athens, ‘People’s Rally received 7.41% (+2.7% in relation to the KKE’s result in 2012).

The KKE had dozens of councilors elected to the regional and municipal councils in the 1^st round. The exact number will be known after the completion of the 2^nd of the elections.

As regards the other political parties, SYRIZA, although it is in the first place in the Attica region, has lower percentages than it received nationwide in 2012. The governing party of ND had significant losses, but with the exception of Attica it seems to have maintained significant forces in the rest of Greece. The other governing party, the social-democratic party PASOK, also had losses, but behind the “mantle” of the ‘independent candidate” was able to get some of its candidates into the 2^nd round of the municipal elections.

A negative feature of the election results was the high percentage of the fascist-Nazi organization “Golden Dawn” in the Attica region (11.1%), and the municipality of Athens (16.1%).

The result is positive and hopeful! The battle continues next Sunday in the elections for the EU Parliament and the 2^nd round, where ‘People’s Rally” will participate.

Below we present:

• A table that compares the results up to now in the 13 regions of the country (the percentage of votes counted is shown) with the results of the KKE in June in 2012.
• Also the statement made in the evening of the 18^th of May by the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas.

Late in the evening of the 18^th of May, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, stressed the following in relation to the 1^st round of the Municipal and Regional elections:

“To begin with, we would like to thank all those men and women who responded to the call of the KKE, joined forces with it, voted for the lists of People’s Rally which were supported by the KKE all over the country in the municipalities and regions.

We call on all these people to join the battle with even more confidence and determination this week in every home, workplace and neighbourhood, in order to strengthen the KKE even further next Sunday in the EU parliamentary elections.

We are aware that our responsibilities have increased. We must contribute more decisively to the regroupment, the combativeness and mass character of the labour and people’s movement, to the organization of the daily struggle of the people, to the creation of a great people’s alliance, with the KKE strong everywhere. We need a strong KKE everywhere in order to prevent worse measures being taken by the anti-people local administrations in the municipalities and regions, so that we can struggle for the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the people, so that we can pave the way, with the people in the forefront of the developments, for the breaking of the shackles of the EU, the monopolies, their governments, whatever name they may go under.

We consider the results obtained by the lists supported by the KKE in the 13 regions of the country and the majority of the municipalities to be positive and hopeful.

The results that have been counted so far show that they approach 9% of the vote. This trend, to a greater or lesser extent, demonstrates that the lists of People’s Rally in the municipalities nationwide have recorded a significant presence in all the municipalities that includes both the election of hundreds of municipal councilors and the possibility of fighting for the majority in some municipalities in the 2^nd round.

We consider the still relatively high percentages of Golden Dawn in the municipality of Athens and in the Attica region to be particularly negative.

The second round of the regional and municipal elections will take place next Sunday. In some instances it seems we have a lot of potential to be in the second round.

For example in Patras, Petroupolis, Ikaria and elsewhere, the final results have not yet been confirmed.

We call on the workers, employees, self-employed, unemployed, pensioners, young men and women, who abstained and did not go to vote today for various reasons, others that want to resist the anti-people political line and voted for various other parties and lists, to increase the dynamism created in the specific instances where we are in the 2^nd round by voting for ‘People’ Rally’ in the 2nd round, as well as by strengthening en masse the lists of the KKE in the EU parliamentary elections.

Where the lists of People’s Rally are not in the 2^nd round, we call on the people to send a message of condemnation in relation to the parties and lists, whatever their name may be, that operate with the political line of assimilating the people into new mechanisms that have been created chiefly after the “Kallikratis” local government reforms as well as by the EU strategy for a Europe of the regions etc.

The electoral law with the 2^nd round distorts the choice of the people. The KKE did not submit and is not going to submit to dilemmas and choose the lesser evil in each instance, which in the final analysis are demonstrated to be as bad or an even greater evil.

The KKE clarified this issue in a timely fashion from the beginning of the election battle, i.e. that the people should not choose any of the other lists.  This does not mean passivity or neutrality.

It means that we point to the path of the real way out for our people, together with the readiness, from the day immediately after the elections, for the tough confrontation and struggle in order to relieve the workers, unemployed, popular households, pensioners, youth, all those who suffer.

We call on the people to resist the false dilemmas “stability and recovery” or “destabilization”, the false expectations fostered by the ND-PASOK government, as the stability and recovery will be for big capital and not for the people.

SYRIZA on the other hand neither wants nor is able to save the people and pave the way for the overthrow.

The people should trust in the KKE, which is not bound by anti-people decisions, dishonorable signatures and dangerous consensus, unlike the other parties that seek the people’s vote and want either to continue their anti-people work or to become Caliph instead of the Caliph.

A vote for the KKE in the 2^nd round of the local elections and in the EU parliamentary elections means that the preconditions can be created for the rebirth of the people’s movement for the concentration of forces to the benefit of the people. Lend dynamism to the KKE for positive developments which will take us forwards. Let us all be strong!”