Greece’s Broken Democracy and the Fightback from the Streets

the fightback begins

by our Balkan Affairs correspondent

What was meant to be Greece’s “Economic Miracle” has ended up being a catalogue of scandals, tight executive control, no government oversight and shocking examples of corruption and tragic incidents that has led to many deaths. But there had to come a point where the masses fought back and that point has finally come.
European authorities promote Greece as a “post crisis success story”. Yet Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing government relies on spyware and the flagrant misuse of EU subsidies and is now overseeing a brutal cost-of-living crisis.
On the night of his election victory on 7 July 2019, new prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that Greece was “returning to normal.” Leader of the right-wing New Democracy party, Mitsotakis promised a government of the “best and brightest” and drew a line under the previous four years of Syriza rule, vowing to erase its legacy piece by piece.
More than six years on, Mitsotakis’s tenure has become a cesspool marred by corruption, financial mismanagement, illegal surveillance, cover-ups, abuse of European Union funds, manipulation of the justice system, and a tightly controlled propaganda machine financed through state resources. It’s something that hasn’t  been seen since the fall of the military dictatorship. 
Mitsotakis came to power promising to break with that past, but his premiership has extended it. The first major crack in his stage managed image came in 2022, when the Predator spyware scandal blew open. Investigations showed hundreds of people, ordinary citizens, journalists, opposition figures, and even his own ministers ,under surveillance through a toxic mix of illegal spyware and “legal” phone taps, just after he put the intelligence service under his direct control. The trail led straight to his office. The head of the National Intelligence Service resigned, but no political figures have been prosecuted, and the government hurriedly shut down the parliamentary inquiry in what the opposition called a blatant whitewash.
Barely six months after the Predator revelations, the Tempe train crash on 28th February 2023, shattered what was left of Mitsotakis’s myth of competence. 58 people, mostly students, were killed when a passenger train slammed head-on into a freight train on the Athens–Thessaloniki line, Greece’s worst rail disaster in living memory. From the first hours, the government tried to shrink the story to a single “tragic human error,” throwing an overworked stationmaster to the wolves. Years of warnings about dead signalling systems, understaffing and stalled safety upgrades were brushed under the carpet.
Nearly three years on: no prosecutions, no real consequences. The families of the deceased have become the standard bearers for their dead relatives , staging mass rallies on the anniversary of the disaster and constantly attacking those responsible in the media and in Parliament . One would think that this level of anger and outrage would lead to electoral punishment , but in June 2023 , New Democracy cruised to an easy victory thanks to a divided left wing opposition and so New Democracy became the default government of the country.
Armed with this renewed mandate, Mitsotakis treated the result as a license to rule without restraint. The OPEKEPE scandal, named after the state agency that channels EU farm subsidies , exposed a subsidy system riddled with made up agricultural projects. Billions in EU funds were routed through this machinery while auditors were pushed aside and agency heads who questioned irregularities were removed.
A European investigation describes a systematic, organised fraud operation using OPEKEPE to siphon off Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds. Brussels has already hit Greece with a €392.2 million fine and a five per cent cut to future farm subsidies for years of non-existent oversight. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back . After enduring wildfires in the Summer , floods in the Winter , crippling austerity measures, the scandalous actions of the Greek Coastguard who left boats filled with asylum seekers to their fate resulting in many deaths and anger over the Government’s support of Israel’s actions in Gaza: public servants started holding regular strikes, followed by the transport sector and finally the agricultural sector. General strikes have become a regular monthly occurrence and when news of the five per cent cut hit the farmers, they took to the streets, literally . 
This last month they have been blockading the main motorway between Thessaloniki and Athens. Blockading the port of Piraeus. Using their vehicles to bring cities to a standstill . Storming the main airport of Crete and disrupting flights. And when the police try to break up their rallies , they are pelted with anything that comes to hand , even overturning police vehicles as the police flee for their lives . And in the week beginning 15th December, a convoy of tractors numbering hundreds are heading to central Athens and Constitution Square for what will surely be a massive show of public support and a showdown with the infamous riot police.
These actions have not affected opinion polls , this is direct action completely separate from party politics and tribalism. It is the Greek people vs a tyrannical regime that plan to hold onto power until the next scheduled elections in 2027 . Few believe they will last that long , even with the Government’s international friends in the European Union, the USA and Israel. The time has come for a price to be paid and the writing is on the wall . 

Greek communists speak out!

Dimitris Koutsoumbas and Theo Russell

Last month Greek communist leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), came to London for a number of events, including a visit to the Marx Memorial Library and Marx’s tomb at Highgate Cemetery. During his stay he talked to the New Worker’s Theo Russell about the current situation in Greece.

Theo Russell: What are the main problems that working people in Greece face?

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: The Greek economy was at the centre of the international capitalist crisis for a decade, from 2009, when the first memorandum was signed, until 2019 when these programmes formally ended. The capitalist economy in Greece is currently entering into a phase of weak recovery but there are ominous forecasts for the economy worldwide in the near future.

Capitalist development requires and demands attacks on the rights of workers and the people by targeting wages and pensions, imposing job losses and deterioration of working conditions (especially for young people), and maintaining a pool of unemployed people. At the same time, trade union rights are under severe attack. The most recent examples are the efforts to restrain the right to strike and force the unions to succumb to the control of the government and employers.

Finally, we have to note our great concern over the continuous and prolonged questioning of the sovereign rights of Greece by the Turkish bourgeois class through the unacceptable maritime agreement with Libya for the establishment of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ). We are very concerned over the increasing involvement of our country in imperialist war plans of the USA, NATO and European Union, to which all the people in our region (including Greek people) must be alert as antagonisms intensify in the Aegean Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East.

Has the Greek economy recovered from the crisis of 2009–2010?

According to figures and indexes, the Greek economy has recovered to some extent. Nevertheless, living standards, rights and incomes that were lost during the years of the crisis have not been recovered. Of course, any recovery of the economy is uncertain and unsafe due to the conditions prevailing in the European and global economy as well as the deceleration of strong economies, which might bring forward and expedite an upcoming new crisis.

None of the rights that were stripped by the governments have been recovered. On the contrary, the anti-people policies are still in force and the flexible labour relations intensify. This barbaric reality for the workers and the popular strata cannot be hidden behind benefits for the extreme poverty given by governments – either the previous only-by-name left-wing government of SYRIZA or the current right-wing government of New Democracy (ND). These benefits aim only to hide the cause that creates and augments poverty along with the fact that the product of any economic growth will be at the hands of capitalists.

It is proven that in the vicious ‘crisis-recovery’ circle of the capitalist economy the only victims are the workers, so the aim of the struggle must be to break this circle through the fight for a development path where the needs of the people will be at the centre, for socialism.

How is the Greek economy affected by the migration of young people?

It is a fact that during the recent years due to the capitalist crisis, the immigration of young scientists, students and workers to other countries, including Britain, increased dramatically. This deprives Greek society of the workers, including the scientific workforce, that could contribute positively. It also worsens the demographic problem in Greece as the population is ageing.

At the same time, though, Greece becomes a host country of other migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. They arrive in our country and they stay trapped because of the reactionary EU policies. It has been established that economic crises, wars and labour being a ‘commodity’ in capitalism are the causes of immigration and refugees. The working class and people’s movements must aim at the elimination of these causes.

How did SYRIZA survive the treachery of the 2015 referendum?

It is worth reminding that the so-called ‘settlement’ or ‘treachery’ perpetrated by SYRIZA was foreseen and rather anticipated. SYRIZA, even when it was only a small opportunist party, always supported Capital’s strategic priorities and strived to present them as ‘left’. People’s disillusionment of the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks (ANEL) coalition government’s administration did not therefore, come as a consequence of some sins committed by some leading cadres of SYRIZA.

SYRIZA never ‘lost its way’ or proved ‘inadequate’. Its true identity was just revealed: a force willing to be a life-jacket for the bourgeois system as its two basic pillars, ND and PASOK, could not form a stable government to manage the crisis to the benefit of Capital. It actually took this step, contributing substantially to the plans of US–NATO imperialism in the area.

Even the referendum organised by SYRIZA was set with a trap question. It actually asked people to choose the memorandum. It eventually joined the group of political forces that supported “Yes” as its MPs voted a third memorandum together with the rest of the bourgeois parties.

This course of SYRIZA, from false hopes to denial, caused a great deal of damage to people’s consciousness. It led left-wing, progressive people who believed in its misleading slogans, to the biggest disappointment, fatalism, resignation. It contributed to greater conservatism inside Greek society, which was also reflected in the election victory of the right-wing party New Democracy last summer. This has always been, after all, the role of social democracy. KKE has highlighted this danger since 2012, when a stream of illusions erupted that SYRIZA would deliver pro-people solutions within the context of EU and capitalist barbarism.

The conclusion that emerges from all this is that the struggles of workers and the people, which break out on the ground of the aggravated problems that the system generates, should target bourgeois governments, international alliances of the Capital, the capitalist economy and the bourgeois state. These struggles should not be trapped in the supposedly ‘humanitarian’ or ‘pro-people’ management of the system, which has never occurred anywhere.

Does the extreme right-wing threat remain eminent after the collapse of Golden Dawn?

The threat of fascism and extreme right-wing will exist for as long as the capitalist system exists; for as long as the big business interests and parts of the capitalist state support and feed organisations such as Golden Dawn, in their attempt to absorb popular discontent; for as long as bourgeois parties that play games with fascism exist. For example, it’s far from coincidence the fact that at the ongoing Golden Dawn trial the prosecutor’s proposal is very lenient despite the fact that plenty of evidence came to light proving that Golden Dawn is a neo-Nazi, criminal organisation.

The Central Committee of KKE in its statement after the latest national elections when Golden Dawn failed to win any seats in the parliament noted: “No one should underestimate the fact that the same forces that previously promoted Golden Dawn ‘withdraw’ it in order to keep this neo-Nazi organisation as a reserve; that a part of its votes moved to other bourgeois parties or to political forces of similar ideology, such as the new party ‘Greek Solution’.”

The strengthening of KKE is the basic precondition to repel, and for the complete isolation of, such forces because KKE is the only power fighting the capitalist system that breeds and uses them. KKE steadily and consistently fought such forces, showed no tolerance, played no games, did not fish for votes from nationalists like other parties did.

What is KKE’s position on the EU and the North-South divide?

The examples of the peoples of Britain, Greece and other EU countries, demonstrate that this capitalist union has far from satisfied the contemporary popular needs. To the contrary, people in all member states are faced with very intensive and long-lasting issues.

This interstate capitalist union serves the capitalist exploitative system and cannot be improved or transformed to a pro-people union, as is argued by those who apologise on the EU’s behalf such Labour in Britain, or SYRIZA and DiEm25 in Greece.

The imperialist nature of the EU has been portrayed as a problem of management regarding which the interests of the ‘hard-core neoliberal’ North and the ‘open-minded’ South collide. This matter is neither geographical nor cultural.

For example, one may consider that the current dangerous situation in Libya is a result of the actions of the EU, USA and NATO, whilst countries of the so-called South such as France and Italy have played a leading role assisted by Greece through the use of the NATO base of Souda in Crete, which has been used for bombings in Libya.

Similar anti-people measures for the dismantlement of the social security system are promoted not only in Greece and France, but also in other countries such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. The fake and disorienting ‘North–South’ division hides capitalist economies of different sizes and at different phases of capitalist development.

In any case, without the working class and the people who will play a leading role in any developments and take the power and control of the economy, any renegotiation of a country’s position inside the EU – or even the departure from the EU – unavoidably serves the interests of the bourgeois class and specific parts of Capital.

The disengagement from the EU can be for the benefit of the people through people’s power and the development of mutually advantageous relationships with other countries and peoples.