More than 200 thousand people assembled  in Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek Parliament  in a tremendous  mass rally supporting “NO”, in the coming Referendum on July 5  for the ultimatum posed  by the EU, the ECB, and the IMF to Greece  to accept a new round of  measures of social cannibalism or to be evicted  from the Euro-zone( the infamous “Grexit)  and then from the EU. The days of the historic popular mobilizations in the years 2010-12 , when first the troika of EU/ECB/IMF with the  willingly servile Greek bourgeois governments imposed the infamous “bail out” programs tied with “Memorandum” of draconian measures of “austerity” to save their banks by starving the people of a bankrupt Greece. 

 

The last five years,  social polarization and  radicalization  produced a  massive turn to the left ,which finally led to the electoral victory of the left reformist Syriza  on January 25, 2015, on the expectation that it will end “austerity”. Five months of fruitless “negotiations” of the pro-EU Syriza  with  the  hostile troika of  E/ECB/IMF, finally collapsed.  On June 22,  a desperate  Tsipras government, under the blackmail of conditions of financial asphyxia imposed by the ECB,  was  at the point of  full capitulation   accepting a new program of  austerity, worst even from the previous ones that the  neo-liberal governments of PASOK and the  right wing New Democracy had imposed in 2010-2014. But at the last moment, on June 24, the IMF introduced     more barbaric measures. Already the signs of a Syriza capitulation had produced  a vast popular discontent  in Greece and areal rebellion in the ranks of Syriza itself.  Returning back to Athens on June 26. Tsipras had faced the dilemma either to commit political suicide himself and his government or to make a new turn. Thus, he announced  that the troika ultimatum  will be posed into a  referendum to be decided by the Greek people itself by a Yes or No.

 

This turn  produced  hysteria in all the  centers of the global capital, in Brussels, Berlin, and Washington first of all. The leaders of the imperialist institutions expressed their fury  demanding   a “Yes| by the Greek voters and  a change of government. The collaborators of the troika in Greece, the bourgeois opposition parties( including the Nazis of the “Golden Dawn”) have staged a counter-revolutionary  anti-communist mobilization of the middle class  named “We stay in Europe” , which revives memories of Allende's Chile in 1973.

 

Disgracefully, the Stalinist Communist Party  boycotts the No| in the referendum claiming that a No to the  clear direct question “you accept the terms of the EU/ECB/IMF , Yes or No?” , indirectly means… a Yes to the government austerity plan… Practically  by printing and distributing a ballot with the name of the CPG (KKE) and its slogans, ( of course, legally this does not count and it is considered  as “nul”) the Stalinists  promote  an “abstentionism'  in favor to the  capitalist parties and system.

 

The EEK, although criticizing the policies of class collaboration  and  adaptation  to the EU of Syriza, the entire logic of fake “negotiations”, is  actively campaign for a NO in the Referendum advancing as well a transitional program of cancellation of the debt , nationalization of the banks under workers control, a restructuring of the economy on new socialist bases, a break from the imperialist EU and for the socialist unification of Europe.

 

We participated today  under our own banners in this tremendous  rally in Syntagma, and we organize our one  EEK rally in front of the old University, at the center of Athens next Wednesday, July the 1st- one day after the non-payment of 1.5 billion euros  to the IMF. Other public meetings of the EEK will take place in cities all over Greece the next days. The Secretary of the EEK Savas Michael-Matsas  gave today an interview in the main News bulletin of  the National Radio Station ERA  presenting the position and analysis of the Trotskyist Party, criticizing as well the  attempt by the government to use the referendum as card to an impossible renegotiation with the EU. The main evening pro-Syriza daily Efsyn published the  Resolution of the Central Committee of the EEK on the referendum.

 

 A new chapter of the world capitalist crisis that erupted in 2007-2008  has been opened. Already  the resistance of the Greek people that imposed a referendum on the imperialist ultimatum has produced globally a tsunami in all financial centers and  a  panic among the imperialists themselves who try now to advance a kind of post-modern coup d'etat  to  establish  their government of servile  stooges in Athens. Merkel, Juncker, Holland, the President of the European Parliament Schulz, the leaders of European Social democracy  are  daily intervening  bluntly demanding a victory of the “Yes” and “regime change”.

 

It is class war. Despite the difficulties, the confusion, the  panic produced by the Greek “corallito” imposed by the ECB, we are fighting with all our  strength, dedication,and confidence  for the final victory of the working class in the developing confrontation between social revolution and counter-revolution.

 

Savas Michael-Matsas 29/6/15