The adoption of a new memorandum after the popular "No" will be a parliamentary coup - organise mass mobilisations to prevent it!

The Syriza government has proposed a new deal with the Troika, which in effect is the same memorandum which was voted down by the referendum. Here we bring a resolution, commenting on this new development, by the .

Five days ago, the people voted “No” to the Memoranda. The adoption of a new memorandum by the parliament is a parliamentary coup. We urge the Left MPs to vote against the government’s proposal and the party to reject it! There must be a mass mobilisation of workers and youth!

The government, being in panic from the threats of Troika for a “Grexit”, chose to renege from the essence of the fresh popular mandate of the referendum last Sunday and submit to a proposal for a new austerity memorandum to the extortionist “institutions". The government’s proposal contains the famous "base" of the previous unacceptable proposals to the Troika, i.e. indirect wage and pension cuts through higher taxes, a large increase in indirect taxes on basic goods, increase of the retirement age, phasing out of EKAS pensioners top up for the poorest pensioners, sweeping privatisations and acceptance of legitimacy of the regime of the Memoranda.

With this proposal - regardless of the response of the Troika - the government officially converted within 5 days from being an exponent of the anti-memorandum "No" to defending the pro-memorandum "Yes". In fact, the government is changing camps and arguing on the side of those it [a week ago] accused of preparing a coup by presenting a false image of the democratic will of the people in order to impose new austerity memoranda. So the government is not at all entitled to present the possible rejection of the proposal by the SYRIZA MPs as a rejection vote in a “vote of confidence in a left government". Because the programme it has is committing to implement over the next three years with the new proposal is in fact a right-wing, memorandum programme.

The government claimed that the proposed measures are "socially just" and that "for the first time, the wealthy are paying up". This is a misnomer, because the government also seeks to impose obvious "socially unjust" wage cuts, pension cuts and indirect tax increases and because the general mandate taken by the people is not for "everyone to pay through new measures". It is a mandate specifically for the repealing of the Memoranda, an end to austerity, to deny most of the debt and to make only the rich and big business pay for the crisis.

The government’s attempt at passing the new memorandum in parliament through a special bill of just one article is clearly not consistent with the recent democratic proclamations that it made around the referendum.  The pledges to democracy were openly violated under the weight of the claims of the creditors to vote this new memorandum proposal from the parliament as soon as possible. If such approval is eventually given, we will face a de facto parliamentary coup, as the parliament will vote on a new memorandum just 5 days after the formal rejection of a memorandum of similar content by 61.3% of the Greek people!

Faced with this shocking challenge, the elementary task of Left MPs and the collective bodies of SYRIZA is to denounce and vote against the memorandum proposal and the bill which will authorise the government to negotiate on this basis with the Troika. The leadership of the Left Platform should adopt a clear stance of voting against the proposal in parliament and fight with all its forces in order that the proposal is condemned by the collective bodies of the party.

Regardless of the attitude of the party, it is urgent and imperative that the workers and youth to mobilise tomorrow with mass gatherings outside the parliament and across the country to demand the rejection of the governmental proposal of a new memorandum.

The Communist Tendency stresses once again that the only solution for the working class and and the impoverished masses is neither a subjection to memoranda nor a return to the national currency on the basis of capitalism, which will generate policies of spiralling austerity. It is to implement a programme of rupture with capitalism itself for the socialist transformation of society, with the militant mobilisation of working people in common struggle and solidarity with the working class across Europe as a guarantor.