The 2nd day of the nationwide general strike

The “heart” of the 2nd day of the enormous 48 hr strike mobilization was beating in the central square of the Greek capital, Syntagma Square, where the All-workers Militant Front (PAME) organized a huge rally-encirclement of the Greek Parliament. And the second day greatly surpassed the precedents of the previous strikes. The volume and militancy constituted a worthy continuation of the 1st day of the 48 hr strike. At the same time inside the Parliament, after the request of the KKE, a roll call vote was held on the articles of the government’s draft law, through which the new anti-worker measures will be implemented.

It should be noted that the attempts of provocateur mechanisms, with the toleration of the police, to strike at the edges of the people’s rally received a combative and organized response from the well-organized protection of PAME which drove back the hooded provocateurs. It is indicative that demonstrators of PAME received murderous attacks, with one demonstrator seriously injured by the attack of the anarcho-fascists. The well-organized protection of PAME effectively repelled the provocateurs and gave a combative answer to the efforts of the mechanisms of the bourgeois class to disperse the rally.

It should be noted that on Wednesday (19/10) on the 1st day of the strike the government with the majority of 154 MPs which it possesses initially passed the draft law in principle. At the same time hundreds of thousands of people(120,000 according to the police who attempted to downplay the participation) were demonstrating outside the parliament, with the forces of the class-oriented trade unions, which are rallied in PAME having, which was generally admitted even by the bourgeois media, the upper hand in terms of mass participation and militancy of the demonstrators who filled the centre of Athens, in comparison with the forces mobilised by the leaderships of the compromised trade union confederations of GSEE and ADEDY. There was a similar situation in the 70 cities throughout the country, where the forces of PAME mobilised tens of thousands of workers and carried out huge demonstrations and occupations of public buildings.
The Executive Secretariat of PAME saluted “the millions of workers, everywhere, in the private and public sector who participated in the strike, overcoming threats, blackmail, intimidation by employers and government.”

Of course, certain Greek and foreign media, seeking to hide the size of the popular anger, focused on the provocateur activity of small groups- in Greece it is well known that these groups are in excellent cooperation with the security services with the aim of dispersing the mass mobilizations. But their plans did not succeed! The protection forces of PAME once again safeguarded the mass protest of thousands of strikers and only when PAME’s demonstrators left the street in front of the Parliament did the incidents occur, on which some of the media misleadingly focused.

Also on the second day of the strike, the forces of PAME sent a message for an overall conflict with the policy of the government, the EU, the IMF. Together with the forces of the trade unions and the federations which rally in PAME, there was a large participation of students, the next generation of the working class, who demonstrated under the banners of the Students’ Front of Struggle (MAS), the Athens Coordinating Committee of the School students as well as of the self-employed and women with the banners of the Nationwide Antimonopoly Rally of the Self-employed and the small Tradesman (PASEVE) and The Greek Women’s Federation (OGE).

These forces demonstrated the opposition of the working people, the youth and the popular strata to the adoption of the new anti-people measures. They declared the opposition of the people to the new sacrifices for the plutocracy that the social democrat government calls for. They demanded: “down with the government and the parties of capital”, “disengagement from the EU-Working class-People’s power”.

The General Secretary of the CC of the KKE, Aleka Papariga, stated from the strike rally outside of the parliament: “the struggle doesn’t stop today, it is being continued. This torrent must be more turbulent, more radical, more subversive. It can sweep everything away under one condition: that they won’t steal the victory in the nick of time as has happened many times before and a big part of the people is finally trapped in illusions.
20/10/2011