12/06/2012

Opening speech of Alexis Tsipras, president of the parliamentary group of SYRIZA United Social Front, at the meeting with the Press (Athens - June 12, 2012)

Greek people, with their vote for SYRIZA - United Social Front  on Sunday, will open the chapter of the new post Junta era in Greeceʼs history.

On Monday we will form a government of all Greeks.

We leave the past behind.

We leave behind the old partisan division of the people that the New Democracy party is currently implementing to save itself in these elections. And we are all making a fresh start, all together. United – not divided. We take a step into the future.

We set the foundation for a new Greece.

A democratic Greece.

With dignity, stability, safety, rule of law and growth.

We take the responsibility to govern the country to put an end to the rotten, corrupt and ineffective political and economic system that threatens Greeceʼs membership in the Eurozone.

The party of corruption and intertwined interests on the backs of the Greek people is over on Sunday.

We take the responsibility to govern the country in order to guarantee a stable, safe and just (fair) course for the people and the country, within the Eurozone. .

We take the responsibility to govern the country in order to restore its international credibility and prestige. In this way, we will ensure the equal participation of Greece in all European and International institutions.

We take the responsibility to govern the country to replace the ineffective Memorandum of bankruptcy with a National Uplifting Plan for the economy, the development and the productive reconstruction.

We take the responsibility to govern the country to restore the right of every Greek family, of every Greek, to a decent life, safe work and fair and just remuneration.

We take the responsibility to govern the country so that all citizens receive a decent pension for old age and care, regardless of their income.  

We take the responsibility to govern the country to restore not only the collective but also the individual rights of citizens.  

The citizenʼs individual rights to safety and security.

We take the responsibility to govern the country with the self-confidence of a calm power that has the will, the knowledge and the ability to change the fate of the people and of the country.

On Monday we will be forming the government of the new post-Junta era:

• Ministerial cabinet with a few members.

•  Ministerial cabinet that will co-operate directly with the public administration.

This in fact signals the end of the armies of highly paid, well-off, settled advisors who replace public administration– in a rather unworthy fashion – functioning as imperium in imperio (a power within a power).

Political party and state are two different notions.

• Staffing of the state mechanism with transparent, meritocratic criteria rather than with intransparent and arbitrary partisan criteria.

The unacceptable phenomenon of  fat cat (earning unreasonably high salaries) managers, directors, presidents, CEOʼs and members of the BoDs of the Public Utilities will be brought to an end on Sunday.  

Their fees and remunerations will correspond to the actual circumstances of the economic and social crisis that the country is going through.

In no case will their remunerations be higher than those of ministers.  

Enrichment with public borrowed money will be stopped. The disconnection of public administration from partisanship and favoritism, the utilization of accumulated knowledge and experience of public administration executives will be to the benefit not only of the Government but of Greece as a whole.  

By act of the new ministerial cabinet:

• The Prime Ministerʼs and the cabinet membersʼ salaries will be cut in half.

•  A registry of personal assets will be drafted starting, symbolically, by the members of the cabinet and by all those who will hold offices and positions of state responsibility, in order to facilitate the direct and immediate comparison of their assets before and after their tenure in government positions.  

• Privileges of deputies, such as free of charge telephony and the use of cars leased by the Hellenic Parliament, will be cut back.
  
  There will also be a cut down of secondments of public executives to deputiesʼ offices – in particular from critical services, with vacant established posts, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, professors and security corps staff.

•  Replacement of the ministerʼs liability law, currently in force, since it is but the institutional auto-immunity of cunning politicians.  

The new governmentʼs first draft laws include:

1. The return of the minimum salary to ?751 euros for all, regardless of age. The return of the unemployment benefit to ?461,5 euros and its granting for double period of time, that is for two years. The return of the after-effect and the obligatory extension of sectoral collective agreements.

2. The abolishment of special taxes for small and medium incomes and first and foremost for the unemployed, those on low wages, low pensions and those living on the poverty line.

3. The new “Seisachthea” (shaking off burdens).

With the total or partial write-off of loan obligations of households to banks, according to their current situation and the reduction of their income.
With the respective write-off of loan obligations for small and medium enterprises, depending on the reduction of their turnover.
With the settlement of farmersʼ debts to banks and the safeguarding of the assets of every farmer at their current levels.
With the freezing of every procedure for sale, by auction of assets, for two years.

4. The upgrading, expansion of the beneficiaries and stable funding of the “Help at Home” programme.

5. Re-establishment of the Workersʼ Housing Organization and of the Workersʼ House.

The immediate priorities of the new government include:

• Achievement of the three parallel and interconnected objectives to stop the downfall of salaries, pensions, social expenditure, in the economy and society overall:
  
  The objective of the material relief of the victims of the crisis and of the memorandum policy,
  
  The stabilization of the economy to deter an even more massive and broad financial disaster,
  
  Instilling the feeling of security and hope, by restricting generalized insecurity and forming visible positive economic and social expectations and prospects.

• Combatting corruption, intertwined interests and re-examination of the scandal of scandals of the former bi-partisanship (two party system) – the Siemens scandal.

Monday morning the regime of impunity in Greece will be terminated. Those who think they swept their doings under the carpet and erased their traces are wrong. The new Parliament for the first time with a majority of incorruptible forces, for the first time with a minority of the post-Junta two-party system forces of corruption and intertwined interests, will seek to identify and to assign liabilities for the big scandals of the previous period as well as for the transformation of a manageable debt crisis into a national tragedy

Dear Friends,

What we are actually experiencing in our country in these last few days is a historic process of peaceful revolution.

A historic process of the political emancipation of our people.

No matter how hard the powers of the past try to bring down the endless passion of our people for a life with dignity, using the architecture of mud and Neroʼs syndrome, they will not make it.  

From Monday morning, the powers of domestic intertwined interests and international loansharking will stop writing down memoranda because our people will start writing history.  

The New Democracy and PASOK parties will pass in oblivion.

However, what is left behind is a pillaged people, a desolate land.

It is we who simply take responsibility.

We assume the heavy weighing historic responsibility to rebuild the country from the ruins of the memorandum.

To establish on solid foundations a fair, effective and meritocratic state, an economy that will respond to the social needs, the needs of our people.

We are neither saviors, nor heroes.

We simply respond to the call of history and do our duty. Our patriotic and democratic duty. To a great extent, whether we make it or not will depend on how much the people will support our efforts.

We cannot promise anything more, nor anything less than what we have been saying before and after the May 6th elections, what we are saying even now, looking all Greeks in the eye:

We will not betray you.

Thank you.