Communists gain in Greek election

When the rightist prime minister of Greece, Constantine Karamanlis, called for early national elections, he thought it would help his New Democracy Party. But his tactic boomeranged on Sept. 16 when his party’s majority dropped from 165 to 152 seats in the 300-member Greek Parliament. The NDP got 42 percent of the popular vote.

As in most West European countries, the center-right NDP has been carrying out open attacks on workers’ rights, while the center-left party—in Greece it’s called PASOK—carries out similar attacks at a slower pace.

Fed up with both parties, which have ruled alternately over the last few decades, Greek voters also reduced PASOK’s representation from 117 to 102.

The gainers included the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which went from 5.9 to 8.2 percent and from 12 to 22 representatives. As it made clear in a recent statement, the KKE has maintained its roots as a party in the tradition of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and with respect for its leader, Lenin. (see inter.kke.gr/News/2007news/2007-07-90th-october/)

KKE Secretary General Aleka Papariga commented: “The KKE’s dynamism did not arrive at the last moment. It was created in action and struggle, it is solid and represents a new and broad radicalism. We have swum against the stream, we have given the signal to struggle against the two parties that won’t change whether they gain or lose, and the signal remains in effect.”

Syriza, another left coalition that lined up with the reformist “Left Parties” of the European Parliament, also gained, going from six to 14 seats in the Greek Parliament. A Greek rightist newspaper reprinted in the Greek-American Herald bemoaned that “about one out of eight Greek voters votes Marxist Left today.”

The only seriously negative aspect of the election was that a far-right party for the first time got more than 3 percent of the vote, thus winning 10 seats.

A series of forest fires—which are tied into reactionary land laws that make burning down forests profitable for some landowners—took 67 lives in late summer and helped discredit the NDP and PASOK.

E-mail: jcat@workers.org