Workers, self-employed, small farmers, youth and women from the popular strata demonstrated on 15/12 in Athens, Thessalonica and dozens of cities around the country against the anti-people “prerequisite” measures. Demonstrations organized by trade unions and other movement organizations, in response to PAME’s call.

Despite the fact that the government announced without any prior warning the dates for the discussion and voting of the draft law with the “prerequisites” in Parliament, the class-oriented forces demonstrated readiness in organizing the workers’ response, with the demonstrations that took place yesterday, which PASEVE, OGE and MAS also took part in.

Panagiotis Kataras, President of the federation of workers in the print and paper industries, spoke at the rally of the mass demonstration that began in Omonia, Athens. Slogans against the government’s measures that are handing over the peoples houses to the bankers resounded at the demonstration, as well as against the antisocial-security-anti-labour measures that will be taken in January and which the government is trying to secure consensus and toleration for.

After the rally there was a march to Parliament.

A large delegation of the CC of the KKE , headed by Dimitris Koutsoumpas, GS of the CC, attended the rally in Omonia. Also present were Ammar Bakdash, GS of the Syrian CP, Victor Tyulkin, First Secretary of the Russian Communist and Workers Party, and Kemal Okuyan, Secretary of the CC of the CP, Turkey, who were in Athens for the event of the Attica Party Organization of the KKE in the “Sporting” stadium held on the 15/12/2015.

Dimitris Koutsoumpas noted the following in his statement to the mass media:

“Today’s prerequisites that have arrived in parliament as a draft law, with fast track procedures, and those that will arrive in the days to come, particularly at the beginning of next year, demonstrate that the our people, the labour-people’s movement, the youth of our country are obliged to follow a specific path: to resist, to rise up, to struggle constantly, with demands against the rottenness of the system, against the EU and the governments that serve them in Greece, to pave the way for a better future for our people and children.”

In the end, the new draft law was passed with the votes of the 153 MPs of the SYRIZA-ANEL government. The KKE voted against the draft law, highlighting via the interventions of its MPs both the real aims of the draft law and also the fact that the other parties, despite their empty squabbles, are political forces of capital belonging to the same bloc and that the people must answer by establishing their own camp, the people’s alliance which will struggle to overthrow the power of capital and the forces that serve it. Speaking from the podium in Parliament, D. Koutsoumpas stressed: “The working class, the people’s movement, their people’s alliance are determined to greet the New Year in a militant, dynamic and class-oriented way. Our people have no other choice. They have already tried everything else. It is time for them to test out their true strength. This is the only way they can realize their hopes and real goals.”

16.12.2015