By Yannis Anifantis

Tension again triggered in the Parliament the position of the general secretary of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoubawho insisted on yesterday’s reports of sugar daddies and female student sponsors.

The general secretary of the KKE went up to the floor of the Parliament this morning for the anniversary report in honor of Women’s Day, with the Parliamentary Group of the KKE on the benches.

Mr. Koutsoubas, attempting to respond to the reactions he caused yesterday with his statement, stated that the KKE never turned a blind eye to exploitation on the contrary, he always denounced her and exposed her: “We did the same thing yesterday. Why do some appear shocked? What disturbs is not the reality but the complaint and the revelation of rot. You are not bothered that these things happen but you are bothered when they surface. So why don’t you report that circles are trying to take advantage of students in this way to pay the high tuition fees at their schools”.

“Do you insist?” You are unacceptable,” reacted Nadia Giannakopoulou from the benches, with the general secretary continuing:
“We denounced these white-skinned peddlers and not, of course, the women victims of exploitation. Instead of denouncing all of them, you denounce the KKE. This is your problem. Don’t let the rottenness of your supposedly beautiful, angelically created world be revealed. We can look the young girls in the eyes and invite them to join us.”

“It was with sadness that I heard him insist. My only consolation is that Aleka Papariga would never say such a thing”, said the Deputy Minister of Education, Zetta Makri, from the government seats.

Zoi Konstantopoulou spoke about an unacceptable and unimaginable statement, stressing that “instead of retracting today with an apology, a childish attempt was made to justify it”.

The entire speech of D. Koutsoubas in the Parliament:

“Today’s International Women’s Day is marked by the nationwide rally of male and female students against the government’s bill on private universities, demanding exclusively public and truly free university education. Here lies the hope! In the struggles of the people and the youth.

So today, the KKE honors all the women fighters of life: the thousands of working women who fight through their unions for collective labor contracts, decent wages, pensions, maternity protection measures. It honors the women farmers who found themselves in the agricultural blockades fighting for survival against the CAP and the government’s policy, the self-employed who fight against tax evasion, the new mothers who claim for their children public and free daycare centers, all-round education in modern and safe schools .

But today, International Women’s Day, our thoughts are also with the mothers who lost their children in the crime of Tempe. We unite our voice with their voice: This crime will not be forgotten! It is among the mothers who are worried about their children who are members of the crew of the frigate “Hydra”, which the government sent to the “mouth of the wolf” in the Red Sea. We unite our voice with their voice: Let the frigate turn back now, the children of the people outside the borders of our country have no business!

And to all the women and from this step we say one thing to them: your participation in the struggles gives oxygen of optimism, strengthens the worker-popular opposition against the anti-people policy of the current government, as well as the previous ones, the hostile bourgeois state and the EE. With your determined will and attitude and in collaboration with the KKE, you can strengthen the struggle for the abolition of all forms of inequality, violence, exploitation and oppression.

And the KKE, you know very well, never turned a blind eye to exploitation. He always denounced her and exposed her by calling names. He did the same yesterday in Parliament. Why do some appear shocked? Because what disturbs is not the reality, but the denunciation and its disclosure. You don’t mind that all these things happen around us, but you do when they surface and make you apologize for your rotten system.

So why don’t you report that circles, entire companies are trying to take advantage of students in this way to pay the high tuition fees for studies in developed European countries.

Here are the ads that encourage it. One from Sweden and one from Denmark. Do you see them ladies and gentlemen? Do you see them? I put them in the minutes. We denounced these peddlers of white flesh and of course not the women – victims of exploitation.

So instead of denouncing all of them, you denounce the KKE. But that’s your problem. Lest this rottenness of your supposedly beautiful, angelically created world be revealed.

We can address the young girls, look them in the eyes and invite them to march together in the struggles to form “cracks” in the “wall” that the modern rot of capitalism is erecting against the peoples of the whole EU, women and men. No matter how hard they try, the ND government, but also SYRIZA, PASOK, the New Left, others here, on the occasion of today, to appear here as “defenders of women’s rights” and of the so-called “equality of genders”, have created a hell with their policies for the women of the working, popular forces.

Stop defending rot, corruption, degeneration, economic dependency, exploitation. Yes, all of you in here are going to hide that you are united in defending the directions of the EU and its anti-people strategy towards women.

You call on female workers to “come to terms” with the work jungle, irregular hours, for the competitiveness of business giants. You call on women to come to terms with the degraded care and protection services for children, the elderly, the disabled, the disabled. Because all this is a “cost” for the state and capital.

We have seen your supposed sensitivity, gentlemen and ladies of the government, towards the rights of the substitute teacher in Heraklion, Crete, who is pregnant with twins and is only entitled to 15 days of sick leave! The Deputy Minister of Education went so far as to claim that “the legislation is not changing and the debate could end there”. You are neither a little nor too provocative saying that she should not have gotten pregnant as a substitute teacher. Is this how you deal with the country’s demographic problem? Or maybe with what the business giants say to young workers, even suggesting that they put the creation of a family on “cryopreservation”?

On the altar of capitalist profit, you submit every social need of women, even comprehensive protection from multiform violence, mainly employer and state violence. No matter how many European directives are passed, the unpopular policy that prevents a woman from standing on her own feet financially and socially independent, to break free from a violent, pathogenic interpersonal relationship, is not overturned.

With the anti-people policy of all of you -made in EE- you have led to the tragic understaffing and underfunding of the SOS line, counseling centers, shelters for abused women and their children. You, the government, have reached the point of leaving the workers in the structures of the Equality Secretariat unpaid from November 2023. Now to pay their earnings.

That’s why we call on every woman to strengthen the fight to overthrow the economic-social-cultural factors that give birth to the perpetrators – “monsters” who even go so far as to commit femicide and leave women vulnerable.

A stronger KKE can become an essential support in the struggle to eradicate the generative form of violence, that is, this system of exploitation, which has in its dna women’s inequality and oppression.

On this road, every woman can find the courage, the endurance to change her life aggressively.”