“Tonight we can now say it with confidence: On Sunday the KKE can get even stronger! That’s the way it should be and that’s the way it will be. We will take care of this, giving our best in the coming days and hours until the ballot box closes”, stressed the head of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoubas, in his speech this evening at the very large central pre-election gathering of the party at the Syntagma.

He noted that “more and more people now know that a new anti-popular government is preparing to be formed. They may delay it a bit, but it will be made by the parties that share the capital’s goals for it and have a common government program.”

“They will do their job, they will form a government. We will do ours too. We will strengthen the stable, confident, militant opposition, the KKE” he underlined.

He added that with a strong KKE, the people, the labor-people’s movement, the large popular majority will be strong so that “we can put obstacles to new anti-people measures, have conquests and individual victories and above all, through all of this, pave the way for the overall satisfaction of modern social popular needs”

D. Koutsoubas emphasized that “the vote for the KKE stays with the KKE, it is not mutated, it is not redeemed, it is not bargained for”.

He referred to the labor-popular struggles of the past four years and the conquests and individual victories of workers and youth, stressing that these were not “overvoting 50% of ND laws, as SYRIZA did, or 70%, as PASOK did, nor by waiting “for the conditions to mature” and for another “muff” supposedly progressive government to come and abolish these laws, as it supposedly did with the memoranda”.

He said that this was achieved by the struggling people with their daily struggle, “against the barbaric policy and repression that accompanies it” in the unions, clubs and struggle committees, putting forward their right and emphasizing that “the communists gave their best themselves, was the mind, the heart and the organizer of these struggles.”

D. Koutsoubas said that “based on the voracious profits of big capital that leaves only leftovers and misery for the people, ND, SYRIZA and PASOK have formulated their programs”, noting that “the needs of the people because, they say, that they cost too much, they have already deleted them. They have been erased long ago by the rotten system of exploitation that is floundering in its dead ends, that is why it is getting worse and worse for the people”.

He said that Al. Tsipras “is upset that we are putting him in the same bag as Mitsotakis”, pointing out that “he himself got into the bag, when he voted for the 3rd barbaric memorandum, making use of the tolerance offered to him by the ND and PASOK at the time. And when afterwards, as an opposition, he turned his back and voted for the 200 anti-people bills of the ND”.

“This is what former SYRIZA voters see today, they abandon him and look forward to the KKE. No other proof is needed. In recent weeks, the needle has been stuck in 1950. In “ti Plastiras, ti Papagos” that Tsipras monotonously repeats to attack the KKE. Rather, Mr. Tsipras, respecting the historical proportions, claims to be the successor of Plastiras.

However, we are the successors of Nikos Belogiannis, who was sent to the execution squad by Plastiras, the Americans and the Palace,” he stressed.

He referred to the “disgusting confrontation between the two social democratic parties of SYRIZA and PASOK over the legacy of Andreas Papandreou” noting “it is not our job, nor do we have any anxiety to draw a conclusion, about who is the legal heir, who has the high ownership and who has the usufruct”.

“However, we want to appeal to the Greek people with democratic, progressive and competitive traditions. They play with your emotions! They play with your memory! They want to make you look to the distant past to steal your vote and then turn it against you. Many may look back on the past with nostalgia, but the reality, whether we like it or not, is that there is no going back to the past. 2023 is not 1981,” he added.

“Now ND and SYRIZA have found a new trope. The special purpose government. On the other hand, SYRIZA fishes in the murky waters that a government can be formed on 4 and 5 small issues, while the governments are all of general and not special purpose. And the ND seizes the pass to project its own blackmails about instability and lack of governance. But we answer them: They did not slaughter that we will bite at their nonsense! Everyone has taken them for granted now!” he added.

Noting that “nothing has changed in the strategy of the parties vying for the government seat, but nothing is the same as before. Because together with the crime in Tempi, we also experienced in our country magnificent mobilizations everywhere throughout Greece”.

He emphasized that the raging river of the people’s anger at the ballot box can only be expressed with the strengthening of the KKE and added, among other things, that “now that almost no one else wants to talk about it anymore, we insist that an answer be given to the slogan of these of protests: “Their profits or our lives”! ND, SYRIZA, PASOK and the rest answer: Their profits! We, the KKE, answer firmly, militantly, decisively: Our lives!”.

As he said, the KKE gives this answer every day with its action and its scientifically elaborated Program which “we submit openly to the people and we are ready to serve them, when the people choose it, when they decide to actively come to the fore in order to follow this way, and be himself really in power.”

“That’s why, for the beautiful, the great, the shocking, socialism, the KKE can today assume great responsibilities” said D. Koutsoubas, adding that the KKE assumes the responsibility to go against the pressures and blackmail of the rotten system , to organize the struggle and the counter-attack of the labor-popular movement, to oppose the transformation of the country into a vast US-NATO base and its participation in the imperialist carnage in Ukraine, to build solid relations with other peoples, to express solidarity with the fighters peoples and in the Communist Parties fighting all over Europe, from one end of the world to the other.

D. Koutsoubas also referred to the “enormous work, the great intervention of the KKE and the KNE in the field of Culture” underlining that “a strong people means having strong antibodies against the rotten values ​​that this rotten system gives birth to and maintains”.

Emphasizing that “only the people save the people, with the KKE in front” he called for an increase in the party’s voter turnout everywhere “and in the 9 single-party states of the country”, noting, among other things, “we all march together, because we all have a class symbol . We are not separated by the color, religion, gender, origin, sexuality and orientation of each and every one, what we voted for yesterday and the day before. We are all totally opposed to any kind of racism, fascism, violence and repression, capitalist brutality.”

“Don’t listen to anyone who tells you this is a wasted vote. Every vote in the KKE adds up to its nationwide percentage and sends more communists, militants to the Parliament, nationwide. Every vote is lost for the parties of ND, SYRIZA, PASOK that governed and their various complements, such as MERA 25 and El. Solution, which co-ruled and brought us here!

We can and we will succeed. Let’s bring hope back to life, with a strong KKE!” emphasized D. Koutsoubas, concluding his speech.