Even before the dissolution of the Greek parliament and the ensuing electoral campaign, International and European powers have launched a campaign of lies and threats aimed at cowering the Greek electorate away from voting for SYRIZA (United Social Front) in the upcoming general election to take place on 25 January. Seconded by the mainstream European media, the “leaders”, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande, Renzi, or Schäuble, are preparing yet another brutal intervention into Greece’s home affairs, a country they have already turned into a mess of social ruin through the inhuman and barbarous austerity policies they have dictated.
The result will be decisive in the social war against the vast majority of the European population!
The CADTM does not have the least doubt about the real intentions of those who have used Greece as a European testing ground for the most extreme neoliberal policies and used the Greeks as guinea pigs for social, political and economic shock therapies. We must be ready for an escalation of their campaign. They cannot allow that SYRIZA gain victory and be emulated throughout Europe! They will stop at nothing because they are well aware that the result of the Greek elections will be decisive in the social war they are waging against the vast majority of the European population!
It is because the stakes are so high that we can expect the “leaders” of Europe and of Greece to refuse to accept the result of the poll which, for the first time in Greek history, should bring victory to the Greek left. They will certainly try to stifle the left wing government that will be the democratic result, because its eventual success will be interpreted as tremendous encouragement, to the workers and peoples of Europe, to resist.
The CADTM, which has always been alongside the Greek people in their struggle against austerity and the grave infringements of their social and democratic rights, again calls on European and worldwide social movements and radical parties to unflinchingly support the resistance and struggle of the Greek people. The illegitimate, illegal and odious debt that the Greek people have been burdened with is not their debt. The CADTM considers that the creation of an international popular commission to audit Greece’s debt in order to identify the illegitimate, illegal and/or odious parts that should not be repaid, would set a precedent and nourish the debate on debt repudiation in all the peripheral European countries.
To support the Greek people and the Greek left in their struggle to liberate the country from the grip of creditors and from the dictatorship of the markets is now the duty, not only of grass roots activists, but also of every European citizen that refuses this Europe of austerity that produces misery, racism and barbarism.
CADTM Europe
