By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
Greek citizens were asked today to decide who will govern them over the next four years. Only their real choices are very limited and are mainly between parties that, on the one hand, are controlled to one degree or another by the domestic oligarchy and the foreign powers that control Greece, on the other hand, are not liked by the Greek people.
The forecasts give a comfortable victory for the right-wing New Democracy party, even if it will not be easy to form a government. This is despite the fact that it is burdened by a huge surveillance scandal, via a mechanism set up with the help of the Israeli intelligence services. Among those watched by Israeli intelligence and the Mitsotakis office, were key government ministers, friends of the Prime Minister’s wife, the heads of the Armed Forces and the Army and the leader of the third-largest party of PASOK Nikos Androulakis. The scandal revealed also the extent to which Israel is gradually but obscurely gaining almost complete control over both Greece and Cyprus, two members of the EU and NATO (the former). Some observers believe also that this scandal was revealed by the US services, angry because Israelis were surveilling also their citizens and because they put in doubt their own monopoly in hearing everybody. It is indicative that, while in the country there were a lot of discussions in Parliament on the subject of the surveillance scandal, not a single leader of a Greek party, from the Communist Party and Varoufakis to Velopoulos of the nationalist right, dared use the word Israel and its derivatives!
In addition to the surveillance scandal, the government is burdened with the improbable situation of the state apparatus, revealed in the Railway tragedy at Tempi, central Greece, the collapse of the health system, with Greece in the worst fate in the whole of the European Union in terms of COVID deaths, dozens of serious scandals and a serious deterioration of the moral atmosphere in the country and of the criminality, while inflation is decimating the income of popular and middle classes.
On the issue of Ukraine, the government followed a foreign policy of extremist anti-Russianism, which is opposed by the great majority of the Greek people, despite the barrage of propaganda that it receives, like all citizens of Western “democracies” from the media. Greeks have too often fallen victim to Western imperialism in modern times, since 1204. During the last century they paid a terrible price as a result of Western interventions as in 1944-49, with the civil war, in 1967 when the US imposed a military dictatorship in Greece, in 1974, when Kissinger organized a coup d’ etat in Nicosia and the Turkish invasion which followed and in 2010 and 2013 by the imposition of the bail – out and bail – in programs of destruction of Greece and Cyprus respectively. No Greek can have any illusion about the criminal character of the western “democratic” capitalistic and imperialistic regimes.
However, New Democracy retains the initiative and will probably win the elections, due to the severity of political, moral and psychological defeat suffered by the Greek people by the betrayal of the leadership of SYRIZA. For the defeat of 2015, SYRIZA’s President Alexis Tsipras bears grave, historical responsibilities, but Yanis Varoufakis, the entire de facto leading core of SYRIZA, as well as the various tendencies and opposition within the party, bear equally grave responsibilities. As if the defeat of 2015 were not enough, SYRIZA then proved that it had no great ideas for the necessary reform of Greece, while it clashed head-on with the national feeling of the majority of Greek citizens, including its voters, on the Macedonian issue, it hasted to “solve” in order to satisfy the US quest for absorbing North Macedonia into NATO.
All formations of the Greek left, including the KKE and MeRA25 of the party founded by Varoufakis, are in equally dire condition. These two parties and various smaller ones will gain from the elections, but also because of the hostility towards SYRIZA of the left voters, not for positive reasons, since both (and the others smaller) lack a serious program and the credibility that they will implement it. Moreover, both parties categorically refuse any cooperation with SYRIZA, contributing in this way to the final victory of Mitsotakis.
The KKE has SYRIZA as its main opponent rather than New Democracy. Besides, it denies any cooperation with anyone, claiming that all the others are bourgeois parties and only they represent the “revolution”. Only those “pure revolutiaries” avoided to take position in the 2015 referendum, in 2010 he took care to mobilize so that the almost insurrectionary demonstration of May 2010 against the imposition of the bail out program and they are now undermining their opposition to NATO by the theory of “conflicting imperialisms” in Ukraine. As for Varoufakis’ party is more or less a one man show, without a clear program. Varoufakis is also accusing President Putin and his regime of being criminals.
According to a poll conducted several days ago, 25% of voters will cast their ballots in order to empede the formation of a government of the right-wing New Democracy, 24% in order not to form a government for the left-wing Syriza and 11% in order to express dissatisfaction with ND, Syriza or both. That is, 60% will vote for negative reasons. Only 39% they will vote because they are attracted by the positive elements of some party. I suppose it is mainly the poor, who hope that the Left will somehow protect them from the demolition of their living standards (to some extent also the rich who want to benefit from the policy of plundering national wealth and abolishing their taxation pursued by the right).
Of course, a huge percentage of Greeks do not vote or vote for various unlikely parties because they believe that no party represents them.
The elections are being held in a climate of rising totalitarianism, with at least 90% of the media engaging in pro-government (and even more pro-NATO, pro-American and anti-Russian) propaganda. The situation in the briefing is the worst Greece has experienced since the fall of the military dictatorship.
A possible victory by Mitsotakis would accelerate the ongoing “existential crisis” of Greece, transformed by the collective West into a laboratory of destruction, through “peaceful” methods, of a nation – state and its civilization.
