May
5th, 2010May
5th, 2010In our country violence has, traditionally, been the choice of those who fear the people; those who were terrified today by the masses present in the streets.
We are living historic moments. We are watching, with deep grief, incidents that seem to come from the future. We want, once again, to express in the most absolute fashion our grief, our sorrow for the loss of human lives.
In “Richard the Third” Shakespeare says that if you want to swear on something and be credible you need to swear on something that you cherish. The perpetrators of this act cannot swear on life. They cannot swear on life because they treated it badly, they humiliated it.
It is well known that we condemn violence unequivocally. We condemn such incidents because we cherish life; we consider it an unalienable value; because we believe that only the massive, unifying struggles of our people can lead us out of the deadlock we are faced with today, the democratic deadlock faced by the country but also the deadlock faced by the Greek economy.
Violence is not the tool of the popular, mass movement - violence is chosen by those who fear the people and the mass movement. The massive presence of the greek working people in the streets today scared those who fear the people. In the whole of Greece, hundreds of thousands of citizens, young and old, working and unemployed took to the streets asking for a democratic way-out of the deadlock.
I heard some remarks, mainly from the representatives of the extreme right who are attempting to put on the garment of normality, the garment of the protector of normality and allow me to say that the spectacle would have been laughable had it not been dangerous.
In 2008 the extreme right targeted SYRIZA (Coalition of Radical Left). Today, the huge crowd caused the SYRIZA block to be outside the Polytechnic School for four hours and thus not to be at the spot where the incidents took place. So, they found the opportunity to accuse the Communist Party of Greece. It is, of course, a provocation, we have already been there, we know the procedure and we are wiser and know better how to deal with it.
This has always been the role of the extreme right in the political history of our country.
Now, we are all more versed in their ways and we shall not fall in the trap of discord that they set for us. The working people, the union members, the members of the parties of the left, every progressive citizen should expect such attacks. And we are ready to counter such attack, now that it is clear who stands to benefit from this economic and political system which is reaching a dead-end.
Finally, it is obviously inappropriate, at this hour, to try and draw political conclusions and take advantage of a grievous incident.
We must all express our deep sorrow.
However, I want to remind you that we were the first who asked for a democratic way out of this dead end. This is why we submitted a proposal for a referendum to allow the people to participate and express their will about the government measures.
Instead of this we are watching, even today that the government insists to move forward to crucial decisions for the future of the Greek people through an express process which constitutes an insult to the Parliament and in these very sad developments it does not pay homage to our unjustly killed co-citizens.