On Wednesday 18/5, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, delivered a speech addressing thousands of people who attended the mass rally in the centre of Athens. Among other things he stressed the following:

“On Sunday we want to meet again with all those who joined us in the popular struggles of the past four years. The hundreds of thousands of workers in the public and private sector who gave us the second place in GSEE and ADEDY. The workers of Athens who elected us as the leading force in the largest Labour Centre of the country and in other Labour Centres, who joined their workers’ unions in a mass way and formed struggle committees.

We want to meet again with the pensioners who never gave up the struggle for a decent life. With the parents, teachers and students that joined us in the protests for just demands in a school that exhausts instead of educating our children. With the artists who struggled through their unions for their labour rights, for an Artistic Education up to the level of contemporary needs. Because the KKE is the force that has put its stamp on culture, with struggles, ideas and actions.

We want to meet again with the thousands of students, who, for the second time, have given first place to Panspoudastiki, the list supported by KNE, in the student elections, leaving DAP, the list supported by ND, in the second place, with a ten-point difference, giving courage and strength to older and younger militants. (...)

In the end, nothing has changed in the strategy of the parties contesting the government, but also nothing is the same as it used to be. Because in our country apart from a crime, the one in Tempe, we have also witnessed great demonstrations all over Greece.

Hundreds of thousands of people and youth flooded the streets and squares all over the country... The people’s rage can only be expressed in one way in the ballot box: by voting for the KKE!

Because as we have promised we will not let this crime, for which as it has been proven all the governments of the past 15 years are responsible, be forgotten. We will be the voice of all the dead!

Now that almost no one else brings about this issue anymore, we insist on trying to find an answer to the slogan of these demonstrations: 'Their profits or our lives'!

ND, SYRIZA, PASOK and the rest answer: their profits! We, the KKE, consistently, militantly, decisively answer: Our lives! And we give this answer every day with our stance, our action and our Programme. Because only the Programme of the KKE highlights in big letters the phrase “Meeting of contemporary needs”! Such is the Programme of the KKE, a Programme of people’s power-governance that takes us out of the present vicious circle and the recurrent deadlocks of this system.

The KKE has a scientifically elaborated Programme for the social ownership of all the wealth-producing means in our country; the factories, big enterprises, ports, airports, railways. So that they no longer operate for the profit of each "investor" - thief, but to meet social needs.

It has a Programme to exploit the central scientific planning of the economy, in order to make the most of the productive potential, the workers and scientists of the country, to eliminate unemployment.

This power and economy will be based on the active role of the workers, who through their assemblies in their workplace will decide on everything, will elect their representatives, up to the highest, national level, whom they will be able to recall at any time in case they are not doing their job well. (…)

We assume responsibility to go against the pressures exerted by this entire decayed system and its blackmails aiming to keep the people manipulated. We assume responsibility to organize the struggle, the counter-attack of the workers and the popular movement.

We assume responsibility to struggle against the transformation of our country into a vast US-NATO base, its participation in the imperialists’ massacre in Ukraine. Because in this country, the imperialists know that they will always be unwelcome, they know that their plans will be hindered and delayed, no matter how good relations they have built with the parties of the system.

We assume responsibility and take important initiatives to build solid relations with the other peoples. We express our solidarity with the struggling peoples, with the Communist Parties struggling throughout Europe, all over the world.

We know that the strengthening of the KKE will give strength to the workers who are on strike in France, to the German workers who are demanding Collective Labour Agreements with wage increases and are faced with Mr Tsipras’ friend, Scholz and his so-called progressive government. (...)

So join us on the path of honesty, consistency and the struggle, for a better future for the many. Leave alone those who call on you to constantly settle for less, for a life inadequate to the potential of our time. They stand alone against us all!

Because only the people can save the people, with the KKE at the forefront!

 18.05.2023