1. It is quite clear that Greece moves quickly towards a third Memorandum agreement. It became clear through the joint statement of Juncker and Tsipras and it is constantly confirmed by the flow of the news. It makes no real difference if it will be called “Memorandum of Understanding” or some other name, the same way the rename of “Troika” to “Institutions” proved to be totally unimportant, except of an element of ridiculousness and deception that are being added to the whole process.
2. The main body of the Troika policy up to date is still being implemented by the government of SYRIZA-ANEL, on the basis of the already existing agreements of New Democracy and PASOK: a fiscal policy of strict discipline, surplus budgets, restrictions in social spending, austerity, a monetary policy totally dependent on the Central European Bank, a total absence of developmental policy. SYRIZA, though in totally different conditions, follows the same way as the Democratic Left (DIMAR) some years ago, meaning the exercise of governmental authority in return for a retreat from the programmatic demands and values of the left.
3. The most outrageous is that new measures are being added to the already existing ones. Although the negotiations are not yet complete and there is a luck of concrete information, is seems that there will be an increase in the indirect taxation that will burden directly the working classes through the increase of the prices in food, electricity, transportation etc., new tax burdens for the middle classes, a selective reduction of pension rights, an interventions to the system of social insurance and to the right to collective working agreements. The famous “red lines” of SYRIZA had the same destiny as those of Papandreou, who first initiated the term to the political vocabulary: they met an interlocutor who was totally blind, who ignored them, despised them and in the end send them aside.
4. The politics of SYRIZA during the pre- electoral period were based on the promise that it was possible to combine two fundamentally opposite thing, the complete abolition of austerity together with a stay in the Eurozone. The wounded, pessimistic and deprived of its self- confidence and perspective society considered the combination of salvation and security as ideal. Plan B stressed from the first moment that this is completely out of question and impossible and that the people is on a crossroad and must choose a way: either Euro and austerity or freedom from austerity together with the jeopardy but at the same time great opportunity for our people to regain and control the monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policy. For all these weeks after the elections we have every single day lived this situation of complete falsehood, despite the desperate efforts of SYRIZA to save whatever was able to be saved, either under the perception that “Obama will save us” or that “Hollande will save us” or that “Draghi will save us”, only to reach the point that the leader of a party that was supposed to be left begs Merkel, the architect of the anti- popular policies of the European Union, for understanding.
5. Up to some months ago a great part of the Greek society, the majority part, was opposing to the Brussels, Berlin and Washington policies, despite the fact that there was a spectacular decrease on the mass movements and struggles, mainly as a result of the former periods of mass mobilization that after all were not really fruitful. SYRIZA within these three months of its governance, along with the reactionary and xenophobic party of ANEL, the only thing that managed to do was to persuade this social space about the danger of a collision with the structures of the European capitalism.
It is sad to see and listen to left militants with communist, Maoist, Trotskyist, radical background, intellectuals that supported the exist of Greece from Eurozone or, at least, the position that “Euro is not a taboo” to retreat, charmed by the governmental power, to remain silent, to support on the television totally different things that those that they used to say. Nevertheless, there are still at the governmental and parliamentarian positions some comrades with a sense of honor and dignity, loyal to the ideals of the left, determined not to synergize to this abuse of the Greek people and to the humiliation of the values of the Left. And they must do this now, before the incorporation of SYRIZA to the politics of Merkel and Soible becomes embedded by the popular masses. SYRIZA has no right to implement a policy totally different than the command that it took from the Greek people. The Left leaded the magnificent general strikes and movements of Syndagma and of every Greek square. It has no right to play the role of the “indignant” and the “betrayed”.
