Q: The Syriza coalition is being transformed into a party. Isn’t there a danger that the left wing of Syriza in this way will be suppressed and marginalised?
The electoral rules render this move virtually obligatory. The first gets a bonus of 50 seats – under the pre-condition that it is a party. So it is also a message to the people that we really intend to become the first and form a popular government if we sustain the enormous pressure put on us.
We consider the transformation into a party nevertheless as a purely technical step without further political implications. Synaspismos [Euro communist right wing split from the Communist Party] anyway got the majority and there remains a kind of proportionate representation in the leadership also with the transformation into a party. In either way we need to fight.
Q: Syriza is against austerity imposed by the troika but wants at the same time to maintain membership in the EU and the Eurozone. Isn’t that in contradiction to both reality and your longstanding position?
The exit from the Eurozone is under the given circumstances no immediate demand of the KOE. With the first treaty signed in May 2010 with the IMF-EU-ECB troika by a government, which at that point of time had already lost any democratic legitimacy, a special regime was imposed on Greece. It is a colonial-type regime within the EU of economic and political occupation dismantling the last traces of bourgeois democracy and national sovereignty. It is leading a policy of social extermination. This diktat of Bruxelles and especially the German factor led Greece into the antechamber of the exit from the Eurozone in order to threaten the Greek people and to keep them politically in check. Under German control they are preparing themselves to impose their conditions of a Greek exit. We have to oppose this alternative German plan to introduce an extremely devaluated national currency.
Q: But the troika will not accept the abrogation of the austerity measures.
They have an enormous problem too. It is not sure that they can maintain the hard line as they face massive popular resistance. Maybe they need to stage a kind of coup d’état?
Q: Do you really believe that a solution within the Eurozone is possible?
It is clear that it is not possible to rebuild a country like Greece within the Eurozone. To achieve the aim of social and national emancipation we need to leave the EU and the Eurozone. This remains our historic goal. But we should not go into the trap prepared by Merkel of an immediate exit under their leadership and their conditions. The immediate goal is to bring down the special regime imposed by the troika of extreme neo-liberalism impoverishing our people. People must be convinced of the necessity of the exit and it must be prepared.
Q: Is an important section of the popular movement sharing this position?
A large majority would support the end of the extreme austerity and the dictatorial regime imposed by the troika. But the ideas what that exactly means and how to do so remain vague. If you raise bluntly the demand for the Eurozone exit you will not rally a majority. But at the same time people are clear that they do not want to remain within at any cost.
You should also take into account that the social base of Syriza has definitely changed. Before it was a middle class and intellectual coalition but now its main base became the popular masses.
Views expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Anti-Imperialist Camp.
