ANA-MPA — Main opposition Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) leader Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday evening declared his party’s “readiness and faith in taking the responsibility of overturning the memorandums’ tyranny and the old-fashioned party corruption… to govern the country at the most difficult moment of its modern history and restore democracy, national independence and the Greek people’s dignity.”
“For a year now, after the May 2012 general elections, which overthrew the political setting, a spectre is haunting Greece: the spectre of SYRIZA and the Left, which manages to unite our people in a broad front of victory and overturn,” Tsipras said at the start of his speech.
“All the aged forces of the country, all the aged forces of the old world that goes out, heve united in a holy alliance to chase this spectre. The parties of yesterday, which are responsible for the country and the people’s plight and which have led the economy to disaster, the far-rightists of Mr. (Prime Minister Antonis) Samaras, the opportunists of Mr. (Government Vice-President Evangelos) Venizelos, the neo-nazis of the Golden Dawn, the barons of the Media and of vested interests, the tax evaders of the various lists and untaxed deposits… all have united in order to fight us,” the main opposition leader added.
Expressing certainty that “the need for a big political change in the country is maturing,” Tsipras invited all forces of the left, voters of other parties, even from coalition ruling New Democracy (ND) and PASOK parties, to unite forces so that “a government of the left puts an end to the memorandums and reconstruct the country.”
Criticising the New Democracy party, the SYRIZA leader charged that the ruling party “is turning more and more to far right views”. The Samaras leadership “knows very well that the stability of his government depends on the full obedience to the country’s creditors and the memorandums and therefore it will be accompanied by authoritarian rule, anti-constitutional practices and suffocating restriction of democracy.”
Against the “black front which is emerging, we must shape a leading programme for the defence of political democracy and of economic, social and individual rights,” he noted.
Tsipras also criticised the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) of adopting an “anti-scientific and ahistorical approach” as regards the necessity of overturning the “memorandums’ cruelty”.
Referring to SYRIZA’s evolution to a unified party, Tsipras said that its “mature transformation into a massive, democratic party is not our exclusive internal affair, but it constitutes a major need of the popular strata.”