On August 15, at dawn, the government of SYRIZA-ANEL brought to a vote in Parliament the new "Memorandum of Understanding." This would be the third "Memorandum of Understanding" and, just as the previous two, aims to sell out the country to the imperialists. The new Memorandum, beyond the unpopular measures that it includes (such as reductions in pensions, selling off of state property, increase in taxes, etc.), was voted on during the holiday season with procedures that even the most reactionary governments of the country did not dare to follow. The swift, but mostly unconstitutional procedure, that followed was certainly a product of degrading pressures of the imperialists on the Greek government to pass the 38 prerequisite measures to implement the unpopular program. It is characteristic that while the Parliament would be closed for a few days until August 16, representatives of the imperialists demanded that the Greek government pass the new measures by the morning of August 14.
Although Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stated in the parliament plenary on February 8, 2015, that “We are each word of the Constitution of this country. It is on this Constitution that we took our oath, It is what we will serve,"[1] he did not hesitate to fulfill, one by one, all the requirements of the imperialists and therefore trample on the civil constitution. Probably this is end of that government. Indeed, the Constitution does not allows changes in the laws about pensions to be voted on as part of other bills, and the cuts in the pensions called for by the two previous Memorandums of Understanding were declared to be in conflict with the Greek Constitution. However, Tsipras did not hesitate to adopt a proposal by the former leader of PASOK E. Venizelos (who drew up the unconstitutional procedures) to rename the bill to overcome the hurdle of unconstitutionality.
It should be noted here that any effort by a minority of SYRIZA MPs not to pass the third 'Memorandum' or to block its enactment (such as that of the president of the Hellenic Parliament Z. Konstantopoulou) by saying that the country would lose its sovereignty through this "Memorandum of Understanding" was pointless, since the country already lost any sovereignty it had when it joined the EEC and later the EU and EMU-EURO. None of them reacted then and all of them defended SYRIZA’s strategic choice of keeping Greece in the EU until now. This is something that they certainly do not want to mention when they to demagogically try deceive the people.
The president of the parliament Z. Konstantopoulou, along with other SYRIZA PMs, reacted to the re-opening of the parliament to pass the Memorandum and convened an extraordinary Conference of the Presidents of the Parliament on August 12, 2015. The Conference of the Presidents consists of one representative of each parliamentary party and representatives of Parliamentary Committees. At the August 12 conference, the leadership of the Khrushchevite revisionist "K"KE offered once again to support the aspirations of the imperialists. The representative of "K"KE Nikos Karathanasopoulos declared: "Therefore, we the KKE acquiesce and we believe that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to open the parliament and if it was up to us to decide, the Memorandum would never be brought up for discussion. It is much more brutal, much more reactionary. From this point of view we certainly do not agree with the government's proposal to bring it up as urgent and we denounce this proposal. (...) Second, we disagree with expediting procedures and with the opening of parliament. The position of this party is clear, we repeat it again today. Certainly it does not depend on our own vote whether to open the Parliament or not, because the process and the majority is given". The next day this would be proven to be only a demagogic speech.
What was at stake that day? The day after the Conference of the Parliaments (August 13) the Minister of Finance E. Tsakalotos had to go to the Eurogroup. The question was whether the Minister would attend the Eurogroup meeting with the 3rd Memorandum voted by the Parliament (as demanded by the EU imperialists) or not. It is important to recognize that although the third memorandum of servitude would sooner or later be approved, since there was a large parliamentary support from SYRIZA, ANEL, ND, PASOK and POTAMI, however (although minor) it was also quite important that the Minister of Finance not attend the Eurogroup meeting with an approved law in his hands. All this because the EU imperialists (especially the German imperialists) wanted to show the process as an initiative of the Greek government and not as a foreign intervention in the country (that is, measures taken by the Troika and imposed on the Greek government).
After the majority of the Conference of the Presidents voted in favor of the opening of the Parliament after midnight, the president of the parliament Z. Konstantopoulou proposed that the Parliament resume in the morning while the pro-government proposal was that the Parliament resume at 2 a.m.(!) It is clear Konstantopoulou's proposal could delay the process long enough so that the Parliament would not have time to vote on the Memorandum before the Eurogroup meeting.
Faced with this development, the representative of "K"KE N. Karathanasopoulos said: "For us it makes no difference whether the Memorandum will be voted on at 3 a.m. or at 1 p.m. the next day." And a little later he said: "For us it would very nice to block this process."
In the vote that followed two proposals were submitted. The proposal of the president of the parliament Z. Konstantopoulou envisaged a delay in the enactment in order to follow the procedure laid down in the process of the bourgeois Constitution, which would have prevented the Minister from attending the Eurogroup meeting with the memorandum approved and the proposal of the government. In the vote that followed the result was:
<> Konstantopoulou's proposal (MPs in disagreement with the government's proposal): 8
SYRIZA Parliamentary Spokesperson Nikos Filis' proposal (government): 10
Abstention: 2 (representatives of "K"KE)
This is the crucial point: If the two representatives of "K"KE had supported Konstantopoulou's proposal, it would have prevailed because the vote would be a tie and then the president’s vote would have prevailed. So, the "K"KE could have stopped the Memorandum from being discussed in the Parliament as Karathanosopoulos claimed they wanted the day before. It was in the "K"KE hands whether the Memorandum would have been discussed before or after the Eurogroup meeting. And we explained before that this would be important because the Minister of Finance would not have the Parliamentary approval to sign any agreement with the imperialists by the set date.
However, their stance led to a new vote in which the First Vice President of the House A. Mitropoulos (SYRIZA) changed his vote and the government's proposal prevailed.
This stance of the representatives of "K"KE does not surprise us. All the time they do not see any issue of the intervention of the imperialists in the internal affairs of the country, but they spread the false idea that a direct withdrawal from the euro would be a disaster, that Greece plays an equal role in the imperialist EU and – as they say in their program – "Capitalism in Greece is in the imperialist stage of development."
Faced with all this, the workers, the unemployed and the poor peasants have a task: The reorganization of the Communist Party on the basis of the principles and the program of the revolutionary Communist Party of 1918-1955 that will lead and organize the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle of our people.
[1] http://www.primeminister.gov.gr/english/2015/02/08/primeministers-a-tsipras-speech-during-the-programmatic-statements-of-the-government/
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