On the mass strike rallies of 28 february 2025
1. The PB of the CC of the KKE salutes the
more than one and a half million demonstrators, workers, employees,
self-employed, small traders and craftsmen, farmers, youth, parents with
their children, artists, intellectuals and many others, who flooded the
squares all over the country and abroad on 28 February, two years after
the crime of Tempe. The people have spoken and the government, the
bourgeois state and their mouthpieces have finally kept silent.
We
especially salute those who took the step for the first time, went on
strike and participated in the strike rallies. The qualitative and at
the same time promising element of these great mobilizations is that
they took the form of a nationwide mass general strike, as the
workplaces came to a standstill, the shops, schools and universities
were closed, the school and university students participated en masse in
the rallies, following the decisions of the trade unions and other mass
bodies of the popular movement and the youth, as well as the call of
the relatives of the victims of Tempe.
2. The crime in Tempe, together with the blatant attempt of the New
Democracy government to cover it up, moves, sensitizes and fills with
anger broader forces of the people and the youth. However, the success
of the trade unions’ strike, which was firmly supported by the forces of
PAME, was neither given nor taken for granted. The struggle of the
strike and of the strike rallies was waged against a multi-faceted
attempt of undermining, which was attempted from the very first moment
by the government, the media propaganda, the compromised trade union
leaderships of the New Democracy, PASOK and SYRIZA in the General
Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the Greek Civil Servants'
Confederation (ADEDY), which, after failing to prevent the strike from
taking place, put obstacles in the way of participation and tried to
distort its content. Even the political forces that called for the
rallies not only deleted the word “strike” from their call, but
slandered this strike as “irrelevant”, “partisan” and contrary to the
struggle for the vindication of the dead of Tempe.Threats by the
government, scaremongering about “destabilization”, intimidation by the
employers in the workplaces and even dismissals, were accompanied by a
parallel attempt to distort the message of this struggle and turn it
into a utopian rehabilitation of the decayed institutions of the
criminal bourgeois state. In all the days leading up to the strike, a
fear-based propaganda was used and eventually the state resorted to
violence and repression, using the well-known mechanisms that always try
to disorientate and slander the movement. These efforts, however,
failed and the mass participation in the strike eventually became a
prerequisite for mass participation in the rallies. The
workers’–people’s movement, the determined and organized people who
fight for their rights, can cancel the anti-people plans, avoid traps
and overcome obstacles. The opponents, however powerful they may appear,
are not omnipotent.
3. The members and friends of the KKE and KNE fought with all their
might for the success of this important struggle for the workers’ and
people’s movement. In the coming period, we will continue and intensify
our efforts to reveal the whole truth about the crime in Tempe, so that
there will be no cover-up and the culprits will be brought to account,
no matter how high-ranking they are, so that our people will never
experience such a tragedy again. Already much of the data and findings
of the investigation into the Tempe crime confirm the KKE’s assessments
of the causes that led to it, especially the policies of the ND, PASOK
and SYRIZA governments since 2009 in the railway sector, based on EU
guidelines, including the segmentation of the railways to sell off its
most profitable parts, the contracts for the safety of trains that were
never carried out, the understaffing and the intensification of the work
of its staff and the use of the railways for NATO needs with the
transport of dangerous goods. We will continue our efforts,
activities and initiatives within the movement, the people and the youth
against everything that undermines their future. But also within the
parliament, using every opportunity offered by the current institutional
framework, being aware that the institutions of the bourgeois state,
the legal framework that the bourgeois governments formulate and
strengthen, whose most blatant expression is the law on the criminal
liability of ministers (i.e. a law that provides for special treatment
of ministers by the justice system, in contrast to other citizens), are
made to promote the cover-up of the crimes of the system.
4. The mobilization of the people and the youth is acting as a catalyst
for the developments that have cornered and shaken the New Democracy
government, not only in relation to the Tempe crime, but also on other
fronts, in the many incidents like Tempe that the people are
experiencing in every aspect of their lives. It turns out is that the
workers, the people and the youth rising up over the Tempe issue is the
tip of the iceberg of a wider indignation and discontent, fear and
concern for the future, which is fuelled overall by the deadlocks of the
capitalist system facing the workers and the people as a whole. It is
about the intensification of exploitation, the attack on the income of
the workers and people with high prices, low wages, taxes, the
deplorable state of vital social services and infrastructures such as
education, health, protection against natural phenomena and disasters,
international developments and the involvement of our country in the war
fronts. Always and everywhere, two irreconcilable interests collide: on
the one hand, the drive for greater profitability of the business
groups and, on the other, the needs of the workers and the people. The essence of this real political and social dilemma of our time is captured in the slogan “their profits or our lives”.
5. The political developments can only be for the benefit of the people
if the workers’ and people’s movement puts its stamp on them,
multiplies the seedbeds of resistance, organizes and rallies forces
everywhere; if a nationally coordinated, united movement develops, which
formulates common positions and objectives of struggle in an
anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly direction and challenges the power of
capital. The solution today is not to use political developments as a
"pressure valve" to diffuse the people’s indignation by pinning their
hopes on a change of government or a change of the prime minister, so
that the same criminal policy can continue unhindered with another
government or other elected officials. These are old formulas with
familiar results. The solution is not to try to restore the decayed and
corrupt political system in order to achieve the infamous “stability”,
“normality” and “social peace” that the other parties are striving for,
which always means silencing the demands of the people. The course of
international and internal developments proves that stability for the
system, especially in the current conditions of fierce competition, the
redivision of the world and military involvement, means new, much
greater sacrifices for the peoples. Many "crutches" are needed to play
the game of political stability. They need both the liberal version of
the New Democracy and the supposedly “progressive” – social-democratic
version of PASOK, SYRIZA, etc., which today is limping along, because it
is identified with the anti-people policies implemented by these forces
when they were in government and tried to deceive the people. They also
need the supposedly “anti-systemic” version of populism and deception,
with the well-known formula —applied in Greece and abroad— of
“disposable” personality-cult parties that invoke “social pathologies” in order to leave the system untouched.
6. The solution lies in consolidating the
people's distrust of the government, the bourgeois state, the policies
they implement, the strategic choices they make on behalf of the ruling
class. In strengthening the doubt against everything that is and
essentially constitutes the system. Because the system is the economy
based on exploitative relations of production, and both its crises and
its growth are always paid for by the working, popular majority. The
system is the business groups that seek maximum profit in every way. The
system is the current bourgeois state with its decayed institutions and
mechanisms, which can never be “rehabilitated”, which can never serve
the just cause of the people. The system is the parties of capital and
the EU that have ruled and are ruling this country. This distrust can
become a decision for an organized, unyielding struggle and rallying of
forces with the KKE, with its revolutionary ideas and programme, for a
different organization of the economy and society, where our lives will
not be considered as a cost, for socialism. All the people who do not
compromise with the barbarity and the suffocation caused by the crimes
of this system, can walk down the path of dignity, of struggle, of
overthrowing this system. This is where true vindication and hope lie!
ATHENS, 1 MARCH 2025
THE PB OF THE CC OF THE KKE
inter.kke.gr
