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| From left: Ilias Stamelos, Michael Selekos, Vangelis Simos. |
In mass political events that took place on Monday in three different municipalities of the Athens region, the Communist Party-backed mayors announced that they will run for office in the local elections which will be held in May 2019.
More specifically, the local Party organisations of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in Kesariani, Haidari and Petroupolis organized political events under the title "The activity of the KKE in the municipality's administration to support the people in their struggle for the rights and contemporary needs". The KKE-backed mayors, heads of "People's Rally" electoral lists, gave detailed accounts of their policies during the last four years thus highlighting numerous examples of their solid support towards the working class.
The communist mayors pointed out that their administrations stood firm against the bourgeois state and governments, by resisting various anti-people reforms and measures. They underlined that, no matter which bourgeois party is in the government, the anti-people policies (underfunding, privatizations, staff shortages, reactionary reforms like the ones of "Callicrates" and, more recently, "Cleisthenes", etc) continue with the same harshness.
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| Mayor of Patras, Kostas Peletidis. |
The "red mayors" said that both the governments of New Democracy and PASOK, as well as the current one under SYRIZA-ANEL, aim in supporting the profitability of the business groups through privatizations and by shifting the burden of the capitalist crisis to the working class and the popular strata.
It must be noted that in the 2014 local elections, the KKE-backed "People's Rally" lists elected mayors in five municipalities across Greece, including the city of Patras (mayor Kostas Peletidis), the island of Ikaria (mayor Stelios Stamoulos) and the other three in the region of Athens.
In Athens, the communist mayors who will run for re-election next May, are Ilias Stamelos in the municipality of Kesariani; Michael Selekos in the municipality of Haidari and Vangelis Simos in the municipality of Petroupolis.
