Papandreou's call for referendum, buckles to Euro pressure [Archive]

ckaihatsu

5th November 2011, 04:27

Greece: Deepening Revolutionary Upsurge, Statement of the Independent Workers Party (POI) of France

Dear sisters and brothers,

Please find below the recent declaration of the Independent Workers Party (POI) of France denouncing the revolting pressures exerted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to prevent the Greek people from expressing their rejection of the European Union/IMF bailout plan through a referendum in the spring of 2012.

The Greek people -- in their unrelenting revolutionary upsurge -- had compelled the Papandreou government in Greece to call for a referendum early next year. Papandreou's announcement that he would hold a referendum was issued, in fact, in the aftermath of the country's 13th nationwide general strike on October 19-20 -- the largest to date, with rallies across Greece that gathered more than 1 million people and with massive occupations of government buildings that have literally shut down the administration of the country.

But Wall Street was immediately rattled by the Greek prime minister's announcement. The financial elites understood that given a chance to express themselves in a referendum, the Greek people would massively reject the EU/IMF-imposed bailout plan. Discussions about the break-up of the Euro Zone and of a wholesale collapse of financial markers were re-ignited.

This explains the huge push by President Barack Obama -- which was then relayed at the G-20 meeting in Cannes by German Premier Angela Merkel and French President Sarkozy -- to force Papandreou to withdraw his proposal to hold a referendum. Predictably, Papandreou caved into the pressures. All these illustrious politicians were quick to respond to the needs and demands of the banksters and speculators.

Issue No. 47 (No. 417 Old Series) of the ILC International Newsletter is devoted to a Special Report on the upsurge in Greece. It is available in French and Spanish. The English version will be ready shortly.

In solidarity,

Alan Benjamin
On behalf of the U.S. Support Committee
of the International Liaison Committee

* * * * * * * * *

POI - Independent Workers Party
ALL STAND BY THE GREEK PEOPLE'S SIDE!

It is with the greatest sense of outrage that the workers and people of France reject the speech made by Sarkozy. He is trying to dictate to the people of Greece what they have the right to do, to tell them whether or not a referendum is possible, what question should be posed in it, and even the reply they should give to that question!

No, Mister Sarkozy, it was pure usurpation of authority when you claimed to speak on behalf of the French people in that diktat issued to the Greek people, who are "guilty" of rising up against the murderous plan dictated by the speculators and bankers. It is pure usurpation of authority when you claim to be acting in the name of democracy, you who already trampled underfoot the French people's vote in the 2005 referendum on the European Constitution, and who today are angrily threatening the Greek people at the merest mention of the word "referendum".

Nobody is fooled. When Sarkozy (and with him, Merkel, Obama and the leaders of international finance capital) demands that the people of Greece give up all of their sovereignty, all the peoples of Europe and the world are being threatened. Sarkozy's brutish warning to the Greek people is also aimed at the French people themselves, coming on the very eve of Fillon's announcement of an increased austerity plan.

This is why the Independent Workers Party (POI) regards as urgent the mobilisation in France of the workers, youth and the whole population to stand by the Greek workers' side against the representatives of finance capital and against our own government of bankrupts and speculators.

The workers and people of Greece have the right to say no to a plan dictated by the troika (IMF-European Union-ECB) which slashes wages and pensions (by as much as 40 percent!), shuts down whole sectors of the civil service (30,000 immediate job-cuts), eliminates all collective bargaining agreements in the private sector, and aims to reduce a free and sovereign people to the status of an impoverished and subject people!

The people of Greece, like the peoples of the whole of Europe, want to live free. They want to decide their own fate for themselves. They refuse to be "sacrificed" on the altar of the world's profiteers, speculators, bankers and capitalists. The people of Greece speak for the all the peoples of Europe when they say: "This debt is not the workers' and people's debt! Let the capitalists pay their own debt! Let the bankers and the speculators pay the bill for their risky deals! We do not recognise any government's right to impose their plans on us!"

The people of Greece have opened up the only path that allows an exit from the "snare" of the debt (and the Maastricht criteria that guarantee the stability of the euro) in which they want to hold all of the peoples of Europe: the path of legitimate uprising which has already produced thirteen general strikes and which, in one way or another (including through a referendum), tomorrow will sweep away the murderous measures. They have opened up the path for the people of Portugal, the people of Spain, of Italy and elsewhere, and have prepared the path that the people of France must also take to save their civil service, their hospitals, their Social Security system, and to save their industry from being offshored. They have opened up the path to winning back popular sovereignty and democracy, which demand that we free ourselves from the shackles of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the IMF.

At a time when they are threatened with being banished from the "international community", it falls to us, the workers of the whole of Europe - and especially to us French workers - to demonstrate our active solidarity by saying to our government: "Hands off the people of Greece!"

Acting within the continuity of the internationalist rally it organised on 1 October in Paris (which heard speeches by activists and labour representatives from Greece, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Ireland as well as France), the National Bureau of the Independent Workers Party will decide at its meeting on Saturday, 5 November, on the appropriate forms for organising the mobilisation in solidarity with the people of Greece. Already, contact has been made with all parties and organisations that stand for the defence of labour interests in order to prepare a large-scale response of the broadest possible unity to the provocative action of a President of the French Republic who only represents the interests of the bankrupts and unscrupulous speculators.

The POI National Secretaries
Claude Jenet, Daniel Gluckstein, Gérard Schivardi, Jean Markun
Paris, 3 November 2011, 12 noon