Greek Communist Party urges Greece not to recognize foreign debts and leave NATO.

Greek Communist Party urges Greece not to recognize foreign debts and leave NATO.(OUTTW).On Tuesday, a spokesman for Greek President Karolos Papoulias announced that five-party talks aimed at cobbling together a government of national unity committed to enacting a European Union bailout package, which would impose deep financial austerity upon the country, had collapsed. A second election has been called for June. “For God’s sake, let’s move towards something better and not something worse,” Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) leader Evangelos Venizelos told reporters after the meeting. “Our motherland can find its way. We will fight for it to find its way.”
The announcement came only nine days after Greek voters delivered a stinging rebuke to the two mainstream parties—the center-left PASOK and center-right New Democracy —by directing one third of their support outside the political establishment. After New Democracy, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) achieved the highest percentage, but other parties fared well too, including the venerable Greek Communist Party (KKE), the small Democratic Left party, the centrist Independent Greeks and, surprisingly, the far-right Golden Dawn party. The KKE rejected an invitation to attend the national unity talks, while Golden Dawn was ignored completely. In the May 6 election, the far-left Syriza received 16.8 percent of voter support, but its principled stand against the EU’s terms and conditions for a 130 billion euro loan, combined with the “sexy” charisma of 37-year-old party leader, Alexis Tsipras (pictured above), has in less than two weeks bumped up Syriza’s popularity to 28 percent of decided voters. The dashing, unmarried Tsipras is a former KKE youth cadre and civil engineer by training. Some political analysts believe Syriza could potentially form the next government with the support of only one junior partner, like the disgraced PASOK, Democratic Left or, maybe, KKE. Indeed, polls show Syriza is now on course to win outright, a result that would bestow an automatic bonus of 50 seats to the party in the 300-seat parliament. After Tuesday’s talks, the Greek president’s office released transcripts of an earlier multi-party meeting, held on Sunday, during which Tsipras stated that there was not sufficient “common ground” with the other parties. “It would be irresponsible to say one thing before the elections and something else afterward,” Tsipras was quoted as saying.
Unlike the eco-friendly, socially liberal Eurocommunist Syriza, which does not advocate a complete departure from the Eurozone, the pro-Moscow working-class Marxists in the KKE refuse to have anything do with the EU’s monetary union. “The Greek Communist Party,” reports the Iranian media, “believes the European financial model is set up so that it cannot function as a unified welfare state, or offer an alternative, lenient fiscal policy towards debt-ridden countries like Greece.” Still, on key points Syriza’s manifesto is similar to that of the KKE: Tsipras would withdraw Greece from NATO and close its bases, halt repayment of the national debt, reverse privatizations, seize banks, eliminate sales tax, and impose a 75 percent tax on the rich.
According to the Toronto Star, Tsipras’ support “now reaches far beyond the confines of the radical left — he is a saviour, the only leader bold enough to seize power from the inept and crooked old men who squandered the future of Greek youth.”
The same news site points out: “The economic crisis that has crushed Greece over the last five years has badly hurt its young people, more than half of whom are now unemployed.” One adoring female Tsipras groupie posted on Facebook: “I would marry you in a sec!!”
By contrast, Alekos Alavanos, the veteran communist who picked Tsipras to take over the Syriza leadership, has urged party supporters to acknowledge that rejecting the bailout package probably means leaving the Eurozone. “The left must warn the people responsibly. Not only by telling them that the road away from the bailout is also the road that leads to exiting the euro, but also that it will be particularly painful, but with prospects,” he wrote in an online editorial.
This policy move, of course, would reduce the ideological differences between Syriza and KKE even more.Three days after the Greek election, Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias, the EU’s only communist head of government, deplored the rise of the Golden Dawn. “It is with shock and horror that we saw a movement which is defined as being Nazi and fascist registering seven percent of the vote about 450,000 votes,” Christofias said in a speech in the capital, Nicosia. “This is a pillaging of modern Greek history. Nazism was responsible for the genocide perpetrated against the people of Greece during the years of its fascist occupation,” Christofias said. In 2008 the Soviet-educated Christofias hosted Russian Communist Party boss Gennady Zyuganov, who visited the Republic of Cyprus as an official representative of then President Dmitry Medvedev.Hmmmm......If Greece leaves NATO what will be Erdogan's next move?Read the full story here.