The head of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, in an interview with ERT on Tuesday night, when asked about the confrontation regarding the minority candidacies in Rodopi, said that “it is known to everyone throughout Greece and not only to the residents of Thrace and N. Greece, that always, for many decades, the Turkish consulate, the Turkish ruling class, the governments, intervened and tried to exploit the minority in their own urban games”.

“Like, unfortunately for us, a series of governments in the past, the ruling class is also using the minority again in respective games. “So this story should stop, minorities should be bridges of friendship, solidarity, understanding between peoples and they cannot be instrumentalized for other interests,” he added.

He said that the KKE candidates from the minority “are doing very well, and they highlight class issues, because the problems are the same” and he then emphasized:

“Let’s not be fooled. The international treaties that have been signed and have determined the borders irrevocably for many decades, are not changed by unilateral actions, nor by some underground consultations, nor by official negotiations. Borders change with wars because these agreements were made after wars. So we should be very careful, and I address both the other political parties and the governments that manage issues, but also the neighboring people. We have a very good relationship with the CC of Turkey, the Turkish workers, the common people, love the Greeks, we are neighboring peoples, we must live peacefully for the well-being of our people.”

Asked “what is it that a vote in the KKE can change on June 25” he said that the KKE needs to increase its percentage and votes a lot to keep the 26 parliamentary seats it won on May 21, as the June 25 elections “they are made by a more unjust, more predatory electoral law.

He said that KKE MPs will be a support in the daily struggles of the Greek people, and added that “only the KKE can make a real opposition”.

Responding to the reports of Al. Tsipras that “it is not important for someone to go from 7% to 8%, but for the correlation of political forces to change and this can only change if someone goes to vote for SYRIZA” said that Al. Tsipras is “using the old dirty PASOK tricks” and noted that SYRIZA with its policy, both as a government and as an opposition, “sent hundreds of thousands of voters to the ND”.

“1% more in the KKE, to go from 7% to 8%, means two seats more, means two MPs who will be everywhere, and in the Parliament to vote against, to block anti-popular bills, inside and outside it, in the struggles of the people. 1% more, for example, in SYRIZA, there will be two MPs who will vote anti-popular laws, because these parties have a common direction in the basic programs, and of course they will essentially undermine the labor-popular movement, the people’s struggles that will contends to gain even one breath of life”.

Asked if the expression “you are” that he uses applies to everyone the same, he said that this expression “became viral because it was based on what the majority of the popular world believed, on what the Greek people believed, because really the parties of the establishment have the same program goals”.

Regarding the possibility of forming an opposition front of the KKE with other parties in the Parliament, he said that “everyone may vote against a bill, but this does not constitute an opposition front”.

As he explained, “the KKE votes against the bills that come from another starting point, which has no common basis with that of the other parties”.

Referring to tourism, he noted that the death of a woman in a wheelchair in Kos, of a tourist in Halkidiki and of a 19-year-old pregnant woman in Nea Makri, in areas developed for tourism, is not a tourist “miracle”.

He emphasized that the tourist “miracle” is for the profits of the groups in the food-tourism industry, while the workers have neither good wages, nor good working conditions, nor good living conditions.

D. Koutsoubas added the following: “Let’s keep a small ‘basket’, because in front of us is a new possible international recession, a new financial crisis. Well, with the extroversion that everyone celebrates and with this ‘miracle’ of the tourist industry, of the ‘heavy industry’, Greece will pay for it. Extroversion means that it will first affect you, your economy, when you don’t have to support, develop, perform ‘miracles’ economically in other sectors”.

Finally, you were asked “more personally” how he deals with his popularity “which far exceeds the percentage of the KKE” and answering the relevant question “do you like him, or are Koutsoubas and the KKE always together?” he answered “Koutsoubas is identified with the KKE because the KKE and Koutsoubas tell great truths, they look the Greek people in the face. They don’t say anything else here on the channel today, on state television and others in closed meetings. They don’t say different things inside the Parliament and different things outside it, when they have contact with the workers. We say the same everywhere and with stability, militancy, we fight, and that’s why we can be a 100% militant opposition to the new anti-people government”.