“In this long journey of the Festival through time, from the stadium of a popular district, to this huge park of Western Athens, the same is the desire for the transformation of society, the same and unchanging is the brilliance of the revolutionary change, the struggle for socialism”, said the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, in his speech this evening at a very large gathering at the 50th KNE-“Odejiti” Festival in Tritsis Park in Ilion, with an emphasis on the 50-year course of the Festival that started from the Stadium Zografou in 1975 said, among other things,

“Here hope comes to life, here the fighting optimism flares up and the belief grows stronger that the working class will succeed, the peoples of the whole world will succeed, they will emerge victorious. We will write history, we will change the world! Our future is socialism!” he emphasized at another point of his speech.

Dimitris Koutsoubas said that the KKE is addressed to all those who are looking for answers for today and anxious for tomorrow, the workers, bio-wrestlers, students, women who experience multi-faceted violence, labor fighters, to those who live first-hand the marginal situations in critical sectors such as health, welfare, medicine, due to their commercialization, to those who have faced the consequences of the absence of preventive measures from natural disasters and fires “since these are counted as costs without benefit for capital and his state”.

“Behind all these and many more problems, there are no hidden “external factors”, some “natural phenomena”, some alleged “lack of resources” and the alleged “limited fiscal possibilities” that the ND government dares to talk about and the rest are silent, SYRIZA, PASOK” he said.

He pointed out that in an era of great technological and scientific achievements these “are not used for the well-being of the working man but for his further exploitation and diverse enslavement to the values ​​and needs of capital”.

“Who can talk about “limited budget possibilities”, when billions are spent on military equipment mainly for the war needs of NATO? When, in fact, in the next few years they will take off, since the shift to the war economy is their new line, maybe there will be a rewarming of investments, as the infamous Draghi plan foresees” said D. Koutsoubas, adding that the KKE wants to discuss ” with all those in our country who are worried about the developments on the war fronts throughout the world and especially in our neighborhood. They see that from where they started two and a half years ago discussing whether to send helmets and humanitarian aid to the Zelensky regime, they moved on to bullets and ammunition, then to armored vehicles, to F-16s, and now they have reached long-range missiles, which they will be able to strike deep into Russian territory.

At the same time, the analysis of the possibility of a nuclear war is increasing, as if it is the most normal thing in the world.”

“We want to discuss with all those who do not have the heart to watch live a year now a real genocide, that of the Palestinian people by the terrorist state of Israel, which with the support of the USA and the EU they are perpetrating in the Middle East, the Red Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, to advance their plans in a region with vast reserves of natural wealth and through which the most important routes for the transport of goods and energy pass.

And of course, we won’t ask where the TV inquisitors who demanded condemnations of Hamas from anyone who condemned the genocide in Gaza have gone, now that the carnage has spread to the West Bank, where there is no Hamas. Now that the fire of war has been lit in Lebanon and elsewhere. Where Israel kills, using asymmetric threats and practices of killing civilians, as now in Lebanon” he added.

“Whatever big and small problem of the time we examine, we will see that behind it is the pursuit of capitalist profit that drives everything in this system, the great imperialist rivalries and antagonisms, the division of the spoils, the directions of the EU, the anti-popular policy of all kinds of civil governments,” he stressed.

He stated that the KKE wants to discuss with “those who feel leftist, progressive are honest people and draw conclusions, they are disgusted by the image presented by the parties of sinful social democracy, especially SYRIZA but also PASOK”.

“None of all this, the intrigues, the Byzantineisms, the backstabbing, no longer resembles what they had learned to call “left”.

This, of course, is the normal and expected end of a path that had as its starting point – it seems distant today – the capitulation to the system, the abandonment of the goal of its overthrow, the removal of trust in the power of the people to take their own lives in his hands” he noted.

D. Koutsoubas said that “the system is always interested in having at least two powerful urban poles, so that one governs and the other absorbs and integrates the popular discontent caused by the anti-popular government policy. That is, to serve as an alternative government option for the system when the existing government ceases to play its role effectively, so that popular discontent can be integrated somewhere”.

“And of course they are looking for a pole that is available to provide consensus and political legitimacy to government decisions that entail great political costs, but are necessary for the system. We saw this over and over during the period of the previous capitalist crisis and the memorandums and it is not excluded that we will see it again immediately, in the event of a new crisis, a more generalized war involvement or a shameful settlement in the Greek-Turkish and Cypriot states” he added and emphasized that “the government of the ND, the other parties of the system, it is clear that they neither want nor can provide a way out of these impasses, to provide solutions to the people’s problems”.

“Recently, several people have come out again and say or write that “the KKE does not take responsibility”. Really, who are they telling this to? The KKE, in its more than a hundred years of history, has always known to assume its responsibilities. He never hid, he never thought twice about throwing himself into the fire of battle” he underlined.

“The KKE still today assumes huge responsibilities. He assumes the responsibility of constituting, together with the struggling people, the only real, working-people’s opposition, the one that faces the Mitsotakis government on an equal footing on all fronts. It collides and exposes the politics in which everyone else agrees and licks off for some bones from the table of power.”

“The KKE is everywhere! The KKE through the scientific, painstaking study of its history, the experience of the international communist movement, the modern world situation, has formulated a modern, elaborate program of power, which it openly submits to the people and fights every day to promote it.

The KKE is fully aware of its responsibilities. Together with the people, he wants and can take it to the end, until the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system, the establishment of a real worker-popular power and government, which will lead to the building of a new society in Greece, without exploitation of man by man, of socialism-communism” emphasized D. Koutsoubas.

With a nationwide coordinated movement, with the KKE at the forefront, we are strengthening the real working-people’s opposition to mainstream politics. We strengthen its current of questioning, with the aim of acquiring an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist content,” he said.

“The cracks in the system don’t scare us, nor do we rush to fix them. We are fighting to make these cracks, big cracks, until the total overthrow. That is why we now take the responsibility to make our Party capable, ready to meet its role, its mission in all conditions, at every sharp turn of the class struggle.

Because what the time brings, not all time brings,” D. Koutsoubas emphasized, concluding his speech, “So let’s go, with the momentum of the 50 years of the Festival, to write the new pages of history. We will make it!”