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STATEMENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE KKE ON THE RESULTS OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS OF 7 JULY 2019

1.    The CC greets the thousands of members of the Party and KNE, Party supporters, cooperators, and voters, who all contributed to the electoral battle waged by the KKE.

We especially greet those who took this step for the first time, the young men and women who gave their first vote to our Party.

We militantly greet all those who supported the KKE in this electoral battle, continuing an similar cooperation that existed during the European Parliament elections.

This cooperation has its own dynamic, one that is not exhausted by candidacies, neither is it measured only by the ballot box. It expresses processes that can be multiplied within the labor and popular movement, in the struggles that must be developed, against the anti-people policies that will be continued by the newly-elected government of New Democracy.

The next day must find new forces on the path of counter-attack, on the path of class policies and mass struggle, the regroupment of the labor movement, the promotion of an anti-capitalist, anti-monopoly social alliance and the drawing of women and youth into the movement.

The strengthening of the political influence of the KKE in working class neighborhoods,in industrial areas of urban centers, shows that the only path to strengthen the KKE in the class struggle and in the parliament is work inside the factories, the department stores, the streets with small shops, in working class neighborhoods, in the health sector, in education, especially  in places where youth are concentrated, when different individual movements and actions unite at the national level with common demands and a direction of challenging the system.

2. The conditions of the Parliamentary election, just as with the European Parliament elections a month ago, reflected the new correlation between the bourgeois parties, with the main feature being the governmental alternation between the two biggest parties of capital, the monopolies, the EU and NATO.  

This governmental alternation takes place within the context of the ruling class's more general aims and demands for a more planned intervention, with the goal of safeguarding the governance system with greater stability and efficiency in the face of potential future risks stemming from the anemic capitalist economic recovery and the sharpened imperialist rivalries that are raging in our region and elsewhere.

The electoral results recorded to some extent a justifiable popular dissatisfaction with the SYRIZA government that had continued the anti-people program of the ND and PASOK governments.

However, it is negative that some people, because of SYRIZA policies, turned toward older previously tried anti-people choices. SYRIZA, implementing “right-wing” anti-popular policies with “left-wing” phraseology brought about greater confusion concerning what is “right-conservative” and what is “left-progressive.” It allowed ND and PASOK to appear justified, to cynically project their anti-people program, the need for a swifter promotion of anti-people restructuring.

ND took advantage of SYRIZA's anti-people policies and the dissatisfaction it caused in order to return to governmental management with a vengeance. SYRIZA served the capitalist system, the EU, NATO in the best possible way, with the result that to a certain degree it destroyed its “left” mask, the image that it wants to give to itself as the continuation of the National Resistance of EAM. At the same time, it attempted and is attempting to renew its forces by drawing from from the space of social democracy and the so-called center-left, appearing as the continuation of E. Benizelos, A. Papandreou, and others. This is the meaning of “reforming SYRIZA”, vying for the PASOK space and recently that of MERA25. The supposed transformation of SYRIZA only leads to the greater reinforcement of the very same anti-people political system.

SYRIZA just as PASOK in the past, tries to 'dress' barbaric anti-people policies with the mantle of “progress” and a “progressive alliance, ultimately denigrating the values of real progress, fueling reactionary reflexes both with it own policies, but also with the negation of hopes from significant sections of the people.

A part of popular dissatisfaction was directed at other forces that were supported and prepared to play the role of either an embankment to genuine popular radicalism or a complement to anti-people government management for the benefit of the capitalists, taking the place of previous ones, such as the Potami, the Enosi Kentron, ANEL and others. At the same time, SYRIZA continues to entrap labor-and popular forces with the logic of a seemingly more "painless capitalist management", "correction of the EU", and "necessary" participation in NATO.

3. The class correlation of forces remains very negative, not only in Greece but also in Europe as a whole. In our region, the trade union and popular movement has not gone into a dynamic phase of mass counter-attack yet.  

The fact that the bourgeois parties can delude the vast popular majority, creates further difficulties in the the labor – popular struggle. The electoral results reflected an overall trend of retreat to conservatism, seeking solutions from a supposedly better management of the capitalist system. Within broad sections of the people the trend of reduced demands, defeatism, and fatalism predominates. However, many working people choose the basic bourgeois parties with a heavy heart, without enthusiasm, and more importantly, without hope that something can change for the better in their lives, maintaining the faint hope that “things won't get worse”.

Today, these working people have a more positive stance towards the KKE, monitoring its positions and seriously thinking about them, even though they still haven't been convinced to take a more decisive step. The KKE's positions attracted interest and positive consideration, independently of whether people chose KKE at the ballot box, or not.
    
All of this is a very serious reserve for the people, but also a responsibility for the KKE, to be a powerful springboard for militant rallying within the ranks of the labor – popular movement. The KKE has faith in the working class, that it will dash the hopes of the bourgeois class and its parties who aim for it to continue to be manipulated and hesitant for a long time period, but finally the working class will become the key factor for the change in the correlation of forces in the movement and at the political level with the goal of power.

4. The KKE will utilize the power of its 300,000 voters and the 5.3% of the vote it was handed by the Greek people, with its 15 elected parliament members, in order to serve the peoples interests. It will be the consistent and militant support of the working people in order to strengthen the labor and popular movement in the counter-attack against the anti-people governmental policies that will be continued, but also against the pseudo-opposition of the other bourgeois parties.

Positive is the increase in votes in the Attica Region, both in relation to the May 2019 European Parliament elections and the parliamentary elections of September 2015, based also on the particular importance that Attica has for the rest of the country.

The percentage for the KKE was achieved under conditions of polarization, blackmailing dilemmas, disappointment, abstention, reduced demands that are cultivated, not only by ND but also by other bourgeois and opportunist forces that present themselves as “left” or as “philosophical”, while the intervention of big business and its allies was intense, witnessed by the pressure that it placed to strengthen ND and SYRIZA, along with the obstacles which among others was the fact that thousands of working people work far away from the place where they exercise their voting rights.

The KKE's percentage was achieved with the hard work of thousands of members and friends of the KKE and other people that joined in common cause during all of the previous period in the movement and in the different electoral battles. It was achieved by presenting to the Greek people the real dilemma of the elections, that is how much power it will give to the KKE who the next day will be on the side of resistance against the anti-people attack, leading the counter-attack for contemporary labor popular needs. Because the strength of the KKE expresses the only people-friendly way-out, the struggle for the people to become the owners of the wealth that its produces, for workers' power, for socialism.

Since 2012 when the current of delusion intensified, believing that SYRIZA would provide people-friendly solutions within the framework of the EU and capitalist barbarism, the KKE highlighted the danger: when people's aspirations are refuted, giving way to fatalism and defeatism it ultimately leads to people distancing themselves from the labor popular movement.

A vote for the KKE even when it expresses a partial or a temporary choice, has elements of a clash with the status-quo, emancipation from conservative politics. Especially for young people, since  it is a vote that demands a knowledge of the history of the revolutionary labor movement, under conditions of a worldwide negative correlation of forces and retreat, strengthening of anti-communism that is carried out in a myriad of ways, with the goal of subjugating the consciousness of the youth and the working people to the rotten and corrupt system. The electoral strength of the KKE is always shaped by the class struggle, at its peak or at a slump. And, under these circumstances, the stability and the influence of the KKE has particular importance. In any case, it has been confirmed that the development of class consciousness does not come automatically, through relative or absolute impoverishment, intensity of exploitation, aggravation of the immediate problems of the people; if action around all of these problems is not part of the development of an ideological and political struggle, not only against one or the other government, one or the other political figure, but overall against the capitalist system itself.

We do not overlook the fact that taking credit for and yet, also slandering by SYRIZA of communist and the Resistance Movement (EAM) values, more widely of the struggles of the popular movement in Greece and internationally, demobilized left radical people and negatively affected the labor-popular movement, while, in a previous period when the capitalist economic crisis was at its peak, it defamed the organized trade union movement. Much negative experience has been gathered  from this, a fact that the labor movement can utilize today to shield its struggles from forms of action that in the end undermine its organized class character. Under the ND government, we won't be surprised if the efforts of SYRIZA and the opportunist space for an “anti-right rallying” is repeated, with an attack on the Party being its strategic goal.

5. The KKE has proven that it extends it hand to all those who want to walk the path of class truth, of justice, of defense of the ideas and the values of socialism – communism, anti-capitalist overthrow, anti-imperialist – anti-war struggle.

Militant women and men took part in the ballots, in the struggles where the KKE led the way, when the other parties demanded that the people abstain from the movement so that they can be manipulated, terrorized, deluded. People that had been in different political spaces even up until yesterday were with the KKE.

The KKE will continue in this direction, within the daily struggles, in the battles we have in front of us, in an effort to increase the spots of resistance and counter-attack, rooted in every workplace, for the strength of the Party to broaden with young militant women and men, to develop the social alliance of salaried workers, of self-employed, farmers and small shop owners, artists, people from the fields of education, health, culture and athletics, to embrace more widely the women and the youth.

We will strive with all means available for the political proposal of the KKE that answers to the impasse of the capitalist mode of production, which is objectively a beacon of resistance and hope for a new socialist – communist society, to “stimulate” the interest and to win the hearts and the consciousnesses of more working people and youth.

6. It is positive that the criminal Nazi Golden Dawn is retreating even more in votes and percentages, remaining out of the Parliament. Naturally, we should not underestimate the fact that the forces that promoted it are now 'withdrawing” it, maintaining this Nazi entity as a reserve, as well as the fact that a percentage of their vote is being moved to other bourgeois parties and to related ideological political spaces, as with “Greek Solution” Party.

The strengthening of the KKE is the basic condition to repel and completely isolate such forces because it is the only force that struggles against the system that creates and utilizes them. The KKE steadily and consistently struggled against such forces, did not show tolerance, did not play games, did not 'fish in the blurry waters' of nationalism, as the other parties did.

7.The votes for the KKE will be cast from today in every workplace, in every neighborhood, in the schools, the universities; they will become a force to block new measures, for the organization of struggles and generally, popular resistance that will target the real enemy, for the relief of the working people, the unemployed, popular households, pensioners, the youth, all those who create the social wealth, but also suffer due to their needs not being satisfied.

We know that the difficulties are not over. The myth of the “post-memorandum” era and “fair and sustainable growth for all” or “growth with prosperity” do not concern the daily life of the people. The next day there will be, first of all capitalist competition and exploitation from which the European Union long-term Memorandum stem, the European Union anti-people commitments that lead to greater bankruptcy for the people. This is the strategy that SYRIZA and ND have, together with PASOK/KINAL and MERA25.

The new conditions demand the organization of a broad ideological-political counter-attack in order to show that there is another road, the road of overthrowing the exploitative system.

The new government is already ready to respond to the demands of capital for new drastic measures supporting its profitability. It will therefore follow the same policy along these main axes: both concerning  domestic as well as external issues, but also active participation in the imperialist designs in the region with the dangerous commitments towards NATO and the USA, with new anti-people measures based on the preconditions that have already been agreed upon with the EU.

The KKE with all its power, inside and outside of the parliament, will struggle against all of this from the standpoint of workers' popular needs and the new government ND and the new delusions that SYRIZA and the other parties of capital will sow; it will lead the way in the organization of struggles of the working class, the popular strata, the middle strata, against the united attack of capital, the EU, NATO. It will organize the popular resistance in order to open the road for genuine overthrow, with the working class, the people in power.

The response and the participation of the popular strata to this invitation of the KKE constitutes the best and most essential vote of confidence in their power and towards their benefit.
    
Tuesday, July 9, 2019

The Central Committee of the KKE