In his speech c.Koutsoumbas accused the SYRIZA-ANEL government and the EU for their antipeople policies as well as the New Democracy opposition and the other bourgeois parties. The General Secretary refered to the contemporary political and socio-economic issues, from government's attack against labour rights to various racist, anti-refugee incidents in the country.
Here are some basic parts of c.Koutsoumbas speech:
(Translated from the original by In Defense of Communism)
The new productive model
that the prime minister presented to us in
the TIF, the famous “road map” for
"equitable development" is a very old and proven recipe: It
contains exemptions to local and foreign capital, (and)
literally only crumbs to the people and the
youth .
Not accidentally, the
criticism from other parties, as well as from
several analysts, left intact the tax and other exemptions for big
business. What dominated was the false questioning
about the actual existence of a small revenue to cover the management
of the the misery they have imposed on our people.
The truth is
that he has surpassed all limits of political deception against our
people in order to serve the objectives of the ruling class. He tries
to hide from the people that the recovery of the capitalist economy
requires more cheap labor force, increasing the degree of
exploitation, new fields of profitability for the business groups,
new risks regarding our country's engagement in warfare.
In fact, he
calls the people to accept uncomplainingly old and new measures and
wait for the miracle of "equitable development", waiting
for any dropped crumbs from the table of the capital's big profits.
He (PM
Tsipras) hides that the emphasis in the use of innovation and new
technology to increase productivity, under capitalism, is not used
to improve the position of workers. While it can objectively reduce
the required working time, it is not accompanied by a general
reduction in working time thus leading to part-time positions, to the
deterioration of labor income. The tendency to increase the gap
between wages and productivity is not just an issue of Greece, but of
the EU as a whole and the other imperialist centers.
Furthermore,
the congratulations that the SYRIZA-ANEL government received from the
European Commission and the “institutions” about changing the
image of Greece are related exactly to these directions. The relevant
commissioner of the European Commission M. Thyssen expressed recently
her pleasure because the present government, as well as the previous
ones, managed to recude the “labor cost” and to align it with
productivity. These political choices of labor income's
“slaughtering”, thanks to his policies, the Prime Minister
advertises as a “positive change” of Greece's image.
The promises
that the people's situation will radically improved with the increase
of the capital's profits and the production of new wealth are
illusive and dangerous.
Firstly,
let's see what the governance of SYRIZA and the governance of previous governments
prove.
The monopoly
groups now contribute less than 5% in annual tax revenues of the
country. For annual taxes, the ship-owners pay just the fares of 2-3
days. The Tsipras government, not only didn't free the people from
the austerity memorandums, not even challenged them, but instead it
founded its own memorandum on the basis of the two previous ones;
that is why it was voted jointly by New Democracy, PASOK and Potami.
The Prime
Minister prides himself for his supposed “left” ideology, in
contrast with New Democracy's neoliberalism, in which he attributes
his supposed social sensitivity. This is the special tactic of
deceiving the people and, of course in this he has the help of other
parties and a part of the media whoch give him a “leftist”
profile in order to deceive the people. The government implemented
the unpopular measures of the previous government and took additional
ones.
THE VIDEO OF DIMITRIS KOUTSOUMBAS' INTRODUCTORY SPEECH (IN GREEK- NO SUBTITLES):
In the following video the General Secretary of KKE answers questions by journalists (In Greek):
