As is well-known, the candidate of the ND-PASOK for President of the Republic received 160 votes in the first round of the elections in parliament on the 17^th of December. The number needed for the candidate to be elected was 200.  The voting will be repeated twice, on the 23/12 and the 29/12. In the last round 180 MPs are needed. If the parliament is not able to elect a President, we will have early general elections. 

In the meanwhile, the case regarding the accusations of an MP of the rightwing party ANEL (Independent Greeks) about an attempt to bribe him into voting for the government candidate for President of the Republic has received a lot of publicity. The social-democratic SYRIZA accused the government of trying to buy MPs, while the government of the rightwing ND and the social-democratic PASOK accused SYRIZA of staging a provocation. 

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, GS of the CC of the KKE, speaking at the 11^th Congress of KNE, made the following reference in relation to the developments: “There is a systematic attempt in this period, using their well-established tactics, for the two main parties to increase the intensity of their arguments, cock fighting and alarmist talk. When we talk about cock fighting and controversies without content, we do not mean that they do not have differences regarding the way to manage the crisis in order to benefit the competitiveness and profitability of capital. This is what they all strive for. 

Chiefly, we say this because both of them, the ND-PASOK coalition government and the official opposition party SYRIZA, as well as other parties, are making a systematic attempt to mislead the people and youth and conceal from them who the real enemy, the real opponent is. 

In the daily confrontation between the government and SYRIZA this opponent is being concealed. 

They point to the enemy-opponent as being only the coalition government, Samaras and Venizelos, some ministers or employees of the Troika or the chancellor of Germany. 

Some talk of the mistakes of officials, as if the strategic choice in favour of the monopolies, the capitalist development path, the integration in the EU and NATO, which led them to follow this political line are not to blame.

The most common answer to the question about the empty state funds, the debts and deficits, is that the clientelist system is to blame, the favours, and the corruption of those that are with each government etc. 

This is the most common answer to the just questions of the people and they are disseminated very cleverly both by the government and the official opposition, blaming each other, with the main emphasis of course on the government of the day so that the other party can present itself as an alternative solution in order to become Caliph instead of the Caliph. 

We do not claim that it does not contain an element of truth when they talk about political favours, buying off, corruption. You saw what is happening now regarding the buying off of MPs. The decay of the system is a given. Bribery and political chicanery are on the agenda. They express the sharpening contradictions amongst sections of the bourgeois class, monopoly groups, inside the EU, and involve their political personnel as well. 

However, this talk of scandals impedes the people from seeing the essence of the political problem and it entraps them into seeking superficial changes inside the bourgeois system, without affecting the exploitative and rotten corrupt system of monopoly power at all.