Syriza wins, Greek workers lose

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The Sept. 20 Greek national election, held in a rush, resulted in the reelection of the Syriza party’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The election occurred merely 30 days after its announcement. It was timed cyni­ cally to take place before the onset of a new wave of punishing austerity conditions—the worst ever— agreed to by Syriza and imposed by European Union (EU) financial institutions and the International Mon­ etary Fund.

Defying the pollsters, Syriza (Coalition of the Radi­ cal Left) nevertheless received 35.47% of the vote, easily beating its neoliberal rivals and only slightly down from the Jan. 25 election that brought it to pow­ er. Syriza’s nearest competitor, the New Democracy Party, received 28.3% of the vote.

Voter turnout was a mere 56%, down 800,000 vot­ ers from January, the lowest percentage since the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974. The small turn­ out reflected disgust with capitalist politicians, “left” or right, who promise relief but deliver more misery. In contrast, 70% voted in the July referendum before Syriza’s sellout to the EU and the banks.

Syriza won 145 seats, down from 149, a minority in the 300-seat parliament. Syriza once again sought a coalition partner in the right-wing Independent Greeks (ANEL), which has opposed the austerity agreement. ANEL won a total of 10 seats, down from 13. In September, Dimitris Kammenos, ANEL’s Dep­ uty Minister for Infrastructure, tweeted anti-Semitic remarks and resigned hours after the new cabinet was sworn in.

The capitalist media reacted to the Syriza victory with delight. Syriza is a capitalist government, not a worker’s government. Said the New York-based Ferro, which manages about $1 billion in assets, “The Greek election result is the best one from a market point of view.” Indeed, a leader who will mislead and betray working people after echoing their demands is often a much better option for the capitalist class than a despised reactionary politician.

Syriza first came to power based on its promise to demand “not one sacrifice for the euro,” the currency of 17 countries in the European Union. Called “the memorandum,” the agreement is for an EU loan of 86 billion euros (U.S. $96 billion) with brutal “free mar­ ket” anti-worker conditions attached.

Unemployment in Greece stands at 26%; 60% for youth. A medical study found that 54% of Greeks are undernourished. Public services are devastated; 50% of children live in poverty. National debt is 180% of the Gross National Product.

The memorandum was rejected by 62% in a July 5 voter referendum. Then, in an astonishingly rapid be­ trayal (but not the first!), the memorandum was nev­ ertheless accepted withn 72 hours of the vote by the pseudo-radical Syriza government.

Incredibly, the deal accepted by Syriza cost 4 billion euros more than the version rejected July 5 by the Greek people. The memorandum wielded additional cuts to pensions, including special aid to the poorest; a hike in taxes on food and other goods and services; a “liberalizing” of the labor market (that is, voiding labor protections and job security); and the privatiza­ tion of 50 billion euros worth of public institutions.

Clearly, the EU rulers sought to punish Greek work­ ing people for daring to vote against austerity (at­ tacks on workers) by voting Syriza in January and voting “no” in July. Indeed, Greece has become a test­ ing ground for capitalists everywhere, including the U.S., probing how far a working class can be bullied into poverty in the age of capitalist crisis. Defections from Syriza Some 40 members of Syriza’s “dissident” parliament members, known as the Left Platform, voted “no” in a final memorandum vote in late August, prompting Tsipras to call for the September election. The former boosters of Syriza in the Left Platform quickly found themselves purged from government and formed an anti-memorandum party called Popular Unity. Eight out of the 11 Left Platform leaders resigned from Syriza.

According to Syriza officials cited in a Financial Times article: “In the aftermath [of the memoran­ dum] at least one third of Syriza’s membership de­ fected to other parties, including those to its left, with others leaving political campaigning altogether.”

On Sept. 1, the majority of the Syriza youth group leadership signed a statement of resignation. An or­ ganization of up to 2500 members, it was a force in Greece’s important student movement. The youth group cited Syriza’s political “bankruptcy” in accept­ ing the memorandum as a major reason for its split. It also cited “the depreciation of internal democracy and collective decisions of the party by the govern­ ment’s leadership.”

Indeed, calls for a Syriza party conference before the final vote on the memorandum and the election were rebuffed by the Tsipras leadership.

Popular Unity did not receive a seat in parliament, falling just short of the 3% threshold with only 2.9% of the vote. “We lost the battle, but not the war,” said PU leader Panagiotis Lafanazis, the former Syriza en­ ergy minister. The PU promoted a “Grexit” (Greek exit from the EU) in a capitalist, not socialist, Greece.

Other memorandum opponents in the election in­ cluded the Greek Communist Party (KKE), a sectarian Stalinist party, which increased its vote only slightly to 5.5% and retained its 15 seats in parliament. De­ spite the crisis, the KKE has rejected any form of unity with other forces, including telling its members not to participate in the memorandum referendum. It’s well known, however, that most KKE members voted “no” anyway.

The anti-capitalist coalition known as “ANTARSYA” increased its vote marginally from .64% to .85%. ANTARSYA suffered a split by two Maoist forma­ tions, ARAN and ARAS, which joined PU. ANTARSYA was extremely active in the “OXI” (no) memorandum vote campaign and anti-fascist mobilizations. Social­ (Above) Syriza’s Tsipras celebrates election victory.

ning in the 1970s, which tended to seek reforms un­ der capitalism while abandoning the Marxist perspec­ tive of proletarian revolution. Tsipras himself and PU leader Lafanazis were Eurocommunists. Syriza also includes various Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, and others. They all promised radical change and party democracy. They got neither.

A fighting working class—alongside allies such as students, women, LGBT people, and immigrants—is the only class capable of leading the fight for social­ ism. Socialists say, “Cancel the debt! For a workers government in Greece!” n