Six Months of Syriza in ‘Opposition’: Are They the Troikas’ Last Card?

"Bread, Peace, Education

The Junta didn't Die in 1973"

“I like Tsipras. He has something fresh to offer. He has achieved much in the role of official opposition…”

Kostas Karamanlis New Democracy ex- Premier to Vima 24^th February 2013

 

Despite announcing last June, to much fanfare, that this was the last Saturday before a new anti-Monetary Union dawn, Tsipras has presided over six months in opposition. In those six months we have seen the future role for Syriza in action.

They are ECB- IMF appendages in waiting: they are the Dem Left’s successors; Maastricht’s honourable heirs. Tsipras flip flops on a range of issues: accepting NATO; accepting a rescheduling of the debts rather than demanding their immediate cancellation; asking people to stay on the streets whilst being the first to depart; selling out strikes etc. This has set the tone for what a possible future Syriza government could look like, assuming an open dictatorship isn’t declared or a peoples’ rebellion occurs.

In 2012 Syriza grew from 4% electoral support to 27%. This was the shortest period of time in history, and happened because of the response by Greeks to the international blackmail and global corporate media attack that they are the ‘laziest’ ‘most corrupt’ ‘biggest shirker’ nation on Earth. They refused to prop up bankrupt and corrupt Western banks. But it was due primarily to the fact that opposition to ‘Grexit’ (Greek exit from the Eurozone) no longer held sway with a majority of the electorate. The 40% that didn’t vote in the election knew they were all the same anyway and kept their conscience clean. But for those who did, the last six months have been the biggest disappointment in an opposition, possibly ever in Greek history.

Tsipras at the Karamanlis foundation function with Samaras, Papoulias and other 4th Reich Quislings 

 

The economic genocide continues apace. There are daily suicides. There are more than 450,000 families with no breadwinner (in total 1.3 million people). There is around 30% official unemployment. Probably around 50% of the population are underemployed; wages have lost around 40-50% of their value. Hospitals have ceased to function in any meaningful sense. We are in an economic tsunami akin to the period of war rationing. Within this monstrous situation, which shows no signs of abating the opposition parties (Syriza, KKE, Independent Greeks etc.) have done nothing apart from engaging in waffle from the sidelines, or turned out to make funeral orations after the defeat of strikes led by them: Steelworkers (KKE), Metroworkers (Antarsya),  Sailors (Syriza). They drone on about how in the next life, we will win, but in this one we can only endure defeat after defeat.

Coordinated campaigns of disorganised resistance and disunity are their hallmarks. They should register a patent and see if they can continue to make money on it, for that is all they are concerned about: receiving their state subsidies as official parties; MP’s sinecures; pension deals as union presidents, who, if they serve just one term, are pensioned off and so on).

It was the people in their hundreds of thousands who saw off Papandreou in June-July and again in October 2011 via mass occupations of squares and disruption of annual military parades. They reduced his party PASOK to a rump with a rabble rouser, Venizelos, whose nickname is Benito, in charge. PASOK’s only lament is that Golden Dawn took votes from them. It appears once more that it will be the people who will get rid of the latest Tripartite Quisling formation known in Greece as the Internal Troika. They gave 1 in 3 of their votes to Syriza and what have they got in return?

 

Syriza’s Abysmal role in ‘Opposition’

The initial elation by Tsipras and Stamoulis arising from their not winning the election suggested the possibility that they agreed not to win. Was there an electronic cooking of the books? After all, the company that computes the results is owned by Latsis and Vgenopoulos, ship owners par excellence. With this they would be able to ‘rock the government in… legality’. In other words they would be a pliant opposition.

 

Meeting Shimon Perez
Tsipras’ first big foray in Opposition was to state we will not go back to the Drachma and met with Shimon Perez ex-Premier of the Zionist US airbase going by the name of Israel. This was to guarantee that any oil exploration projects, as was also the case with his friends in the Cypriot Government, would be handed to Israeli companies and that any future president would guarantee their investments.

Drachma not an Option-Interview with Tsipras
http://www.athensnews.gr/issue/13512/58165

 

Hiding from the anti-Merkel anti-MoU (EU Monetary Union) protests
During Merkel’s visits, despite ex-PASOK MP’s Sakorafa stating that we will stay on the streets so as to end the third round of cuts imposed by the MoU, what did they do? They left Parliament and held their banner outside the steps whilst the rest of the population routinely were teargassed. Despite union members dressing up in SS uniforms and chanting ‘down with the 4^th Reich!’, Syriza refused to leave the Parliament, stating that to do so would go against Parliamentary democracy. When hundreds of thousands demonstrate and the desire and need is for them to stay out to win, if there was even a nominal leadership this could be achieved. Instead we have a commitment to Parliamentarism which is beyond even what the parliamentarians are doing. After all, they no longer govern via Parliament, which governs by Executive Decree, signed and sealed by a corrupt President whose nickname in street protests is Papoulia-Julia (porn actress deliberately made famous by the corporate media during the arrival of the IMF so as to confuse sections of the population).

Anti-Merkel Protests No to the 4th Reich

 

 

Avoiding all slum visits in Brazil and flipflopping on debt repayments in Argentina
We then had Tsipras’ long holidays to Latin America to gain international kudos as if the big boys across the Atlantic aren’t supporting him as the next best hope for their financial sharks who want their pound of flesh from the decapitated Greek nation. Brazil was touted as a model of development, the country that not too long ago was bumping off street kids and has a police force, which to this day, makes the Greek one look like it operates in the spirit of Gandhi.

                                                  Tsipras in Brazil, sunglasses for a visit!


 In Argentina, the country survived its economic collapse only after an insurrection, the collapse of many governments and the restoration of the Peso, decoupled from the US Dollar. But despite Tsipras knowing all this, all we heard from him back in Greece was how they paid back a portion of their debts and…restructured them.

 

Brookings Institute and Washington, Tsipras Made in the USA

Tsipras pro-American stance started to reveal itself just six months after being the main opposition. Whilst not still able to go openly to the inauguration of a US President, he was there soon after speaking in one of the most Cold-War institutes in the USA, the Brookings Institute. He said nothing less than that austerity is killing capitalism and he wanted to save it. According to the German media, one of the meetings in New York was funded by Soros, that well known financier who always seeks his pound of flesh against nations when he isn’t actively destabilizing them culturally.

Metro workers burning back to work papers...

 

The message back in Greece, in particular after Syriza’s conference in early December, was that there are two wings in the party: the ‘pragmatist’ wing that sees Obama as a saviour and the ‘left’ party wing led by Lafazani, which oscillates from saying that it wants the return of a national currency, to talking up strikes in order to aid in their betrayal when the government announces another ‘emergency decree’ to ban them.

Tsipras flipflopped on being against NATO, considering it no longer is an issue under the present dire economic circumstances, despite the fact that, according to bourgeois commentators such as the Guardian’s Helena Smith, Greece probably spent around 250 Billion Euros in arms. Tsipras implies he wants to maintain these payments at all costs, along with Greece’s external commitments, including soldiers as part of NATO, in Kosovo, Afghanistan etc - and wherever else NATO decides to invade in the future (even Greece itself if it comes to it!)

 

Politicians don’t run Greece, neither does Parliament. So don’t expect anything from the Fake Left either.

With the Troika in charge of every Ministry; with some banks being funded by the ECB; with no National Agricultural Bank; with all decisions regarding ‘national’ economic policy set by Brussels, then Greece is no longer a state with its own decision making bodies. It has become an EU Protectorate. The fake left refuses to accept this vital fact in order to maintain its role, which is none other than propping up the IMF. It does so by its policy of coordinated disunited resistance, allowing section after section of employees to be dragged into defeat, kicking and screaming.

Whilst Metro workers and Sailors tore up their militaristic orders from the government to return to work, the union tops brought out lawyers who threatened them with being fired, arguing on the picket line for them to go home. Then we had the despicable spectacle of the fake ‘lefts’ appearing to march back in defeat and give militant sounding speeches about the future ‘struggle’. Lafazanis and Papariga turned up in unison for the sellout, whilst everywhere else they march separately, here they struck together!

Greeks waiting for free handouts from Greek farmers

 

The mass privatisation and selloffs of Greece will be stopped only by popular struggle, as occurred in Keratea over the creation of dumpsites right next to peoples’ homes. Whether we get a new government in the coming period (Syriza in power with Ind Greeks seems most likely as the KKE is refusing to join Syriza) this kind of resistance will continue because the  present government seems to now be a busted flush.

Samaras’ handing over sea rights to Turkey, wanting to seel the main state owned Greek gas import company to the Americans, despite being offered double by the Russians have all contributed to this inherent national bankruptcy of the internal Troika.

The hundred thousand who marched for the umpteenth time in another 24 hour General Strike in Athens on Wednesday 20^th February shows that people are willing to take on the IMF. All that is lacking is the leadership.

 

 

Updates:

25.02.13

Syrizas economics team around Dragasakis announced that due to budgetary constraints and the delay in assuming power it will probably be impossible the longer Syriza remains out of power or constitutes the backbone of a new government to restore the minimum wage as promised to the pre-Troika period.

26.02.13
Tsipras is to speak at the 15year funeral oration for the founder of New Democracy Konstantinos Karamanlis. From marching with PASOK-Dimar now speaking at New Democracy functions....

03.03.13
Alavanos ex-leader of Sinaspismos wants to found the Party of the Drachma in discussion talks with Antarsya...Kazakis of EPAM...