Strike concerning the public television

The workers in Greece, with militant demonstrations and the strong presence of the class-oriented forces, protest against the decision of the government to suddenly close the state radio-television (ERT), casting 2,600 workers into unemployment. The Prime Minister of Greece, A. Samaras, who is the leader of the conservative ND party, in this decision of his which has as its pretext the “saving of public funds” and “fighting against corruption”, bypassed both the parliament and his governmental “partners”, the social-democratic PASOK and the “leftwing” Democratic Left, who all together implement the anti-people political line.

The KKE and other opposition parties denounced the decision. The GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, visited the headquarters of ERT and expressed the full solidarity of the KKE with workers of ERT and underlined the need for a joint struggle to defend the public radio-television, the public property, which is wealth that belongs to the people.

On the evening of 12/6, D. Koutsoumpas, speaking at the rally of the KKE in Larissa about the KKE’s political proposal, answered the line Prime Minister’s line of argumentation: “The Prime Minister in his speech tonight attempted to excuse the inexcusable without any understanding and without taking any responsibility for the governments that his party and he himself participated in regarding the enormous destruction of productive forces that has taken place, above all labour power, as well as regarding the destruction of many small businesses, leading to the unemployment and the bankruptcy of thousands of workers. He made every effort to hide the fact that the basic guilty party is the capitalist development path, the capitalist profitability of the few, which he and his party serve. He carried out various acrobatic manoeuvres, sometimes revealing that the socialism which we knew in the 20^th century is to blame, other times that the workers in the public sector and particularly ERT are to blame, other times that narrow sectional interests and privileges are to blame. But the distorted capitalist public sector, which he is allegedly denouncing, is a creation of the system which he and people like him serve. The workers, the people of Greece must fight for another public sector, without businessmen, without monopolies, with the socialization of the monopolies, for working class-people’s power, where the people will be the masters in their country.”

It should be noted that the KKE provided the frequency of its television station 902 so that it could be used to broadcast the strike TV programme of the journalists of ERT, while a continuous stream on the developments is broadcast by the KKE’s portal - http://902.gr/ or (http://902.gr/902live.htm).

On 13/6 a general strike was held in Greece in the public and private sector against the government’s decision. The All-workers’ Militant Front (PAME) is holding strike demonstrations in dozens of Greek cities, while in Athens the strike rally will be held in the area where ERT’s building is, where from the very first moment thousands of workers had gathered.