BY BOBBIS MISAILIDES

ATHENS, Greece - "After the vote: Tighten your belts for guns and Maastricht," read a headline in the October 15 Athens News. The English-language daily published here pointed out that the social democratic government of Prime Minister Constantínos Simítis is about to launch a new wave of austerity measures and a huge armaments program.

Simítis swept the early elections he called for September 22 - a year ahead of schedule. Simítis replaced Andreas Papandreou after the former prime minister died in June. His party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), won 162 seats in the 300-member parliament with 41.5 percent of the vote. The conservative New Democracy (ND), the main bourgeois opposition party, came in second with 38 percent.

Simítis won a confidence vote in parliament October 12, as he outlined the first cuts in social programs his government intends to introduce over the next month, and its militarization campaign in preparation for further confrontations with Turkey. According to Athens News, the belt tightening include a halt in public sector hiring and the abolition of tax breaks for millions of households. The government is also planning to curtail social security and sell off shares of state-owned monopolies in telecommunications, oil refining, and other industries to private investors, laying off thousands of workers.

The PASOK regime claims the austerity measures are necessary to bring the budget deficit down from 7.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the 3 percent required for joining the so-called European Monetary Union by the year 2000. To join in the European Union (EU) "common" currency, the government is also required to slash inflation, now at an annual rate of 8.5 percent -three times higher than the EU average. Bipartisan shift to right
The elections registered a further shift to the right of the bipartisan framework of bourgeois politics. During the election campaign, PASOK leader Georgios Pashalides accused Miltiades Evert, New Democracy's candidate for prime minister, of "being capable of proclaiming ND a socialist party" in order to win the elections. Evert, in turn, denounced Simítis for "following a terribly conservative monetarist view that touches the limits of neoliberalism."

Since the fall of the military regime in 1974, New Democracy and PASOK have alternated in government, leading the assault on the standard of living of working people. The average real wage in 1995 was 3 percent lower than the 1982 level. Today, 23 percent to 35 percent of working people live below the official poverty level in four of the country's seven regions on the mainland. This is especially true in northern provinces such as Thrace, where a high percentage of the working class is composed of oppressed nationalities - Turks, Macedonians, and others. Half a million retired workers, in a population of 10 million, get a state pension of Dr. 80,000 (US$330) per month, which is below the poverty level. Over the last decade, 300,000 working farmers have been forced off their land, moving to the cities for other jobs.

The decline of real wages and social benefits is continuing in the middle of a two-year-long economic recovery. Industrial production has risen 1.6 percent so far this year, for example. Joblessness, however, has continued to climb - reaching 10.2 percent in September - as the employers "downsize" to cut costs.

At the same time, the PASOK administration has unleashed attacks on democratic rights. In the last two years, the police have assaulted striking shipyard workers, other unionists resisting layoffs, and retirees demanding higher pensions.

During the election campaign, Evert proposed that regions of Greece hardest hit with unemployment "should not have any foreigners." He blamed immigrants for an "increase in crime" and said, "We face the problem of providing jobs for young people, while at the same time there are 400,000 illegals in the country, about the same as the Greek unemployment level." Simítis, while taking some distance from these chauvinist statements, ordered the police to carry out "Operation Broom" prior to the September elections - arresting and expelling 5,000 undocumented workers, most from Albania.

Evert and other candidates of New Democracy campaigned for proposals they said would result in economic growth much higher than the current 2.2 percent annual rate. "Only through massive privatizations, with the abolition of state monopolies, can Greece repeat its economic miracle of 1953-73 and begin again to grow at a pace of 5 percent to 6 percent annually," said Stamátis Manos, a central leader of New Democracy.

Faced with stiffening competition in exports of food and other commodities by capitalists in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, Greek capitalists are on a drive to expand investment and trade in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. In its attempts at economic expansion, Athens comes up not only against its imperialist rivals, but also the capitalist rulers of Turkey.

Tensions have sharpened between Athens and Ankara over a territorial dispute involving mineral deposits in the Aegean Sea and over Cyprus. Earlier this year Greek and Turkish naval ships came within minutes of opening fire on each other.

The rulers of Greece are whipping up nationalist and anti- Turkish sentiment in their attempts to rally working people around their militarization and austerity program. At a September 12 news conference, Simítis clearly outlined his central foreign policy priority. "On the road towards the year 2000, we face one threat: Turkish aggression in the Aegean, Thrace, and Cyprus," he said. Evert accused PASOK of "retreating on our national interests," and proposed a more aggressive policy to expand the territorial limits around the Greek islands in the Aegean sea from 6 to 12 miles - a measure that could provoke military retaliation from Ankara.

Most of the smaller opposition groups pushed their own nationalist tirades against Turkey during the election campaign. Four of these parties joined PASOK and ND in having their representatives be the godfathers of the daughter of Greek- Cypriot Tassos Isaak, who was beaten to death in Cyprus in August by supporters of the Gray Wolves, a Turkish fascist outfit. Isaak took part in a protest organized by Greek right- wing groups on the line dividing Cyprus between Greek- and Turkish-speaking areas. These opposition parties include the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which came third with 5.6 percent of the vote, and the Left Coalition, a regroupment of social democrats and Stalinists who split from KKE, which got 5.1 percent.

"Trillions of drachmas [billions of dollars] will be invested in the next five years to safeguard our national sovereignty," Defense Minister Akis Tsochadzópoulos told the October 15 Athens News. Defense ministry officials said the new armaments program could cost as much as $10 billion with F-16 fighters, missiles, and attack helicopters. Athens already spends 4.6 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product on the military budget, more than most other NATO members. Attacks by fascist groups
The rulers' war drive and nationalist campaign is putting wind in the sails of fascist forces. In September 1995 the mayor of the city of Florina led a group of 30-40 fascists, with the collaboration of the police, to burn the offices of the Rainbow, an organization of Macedonians based in that city near the border with the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

In recent months, fascist organizations such as the Chrisí Avgí (Golden Dawn) and Stóhos (Aim) have stepped up attacks on immigrants, anti-racist fighters, and on the oppressed Turkish- speaking workers living in the slums of Athens. The Rainbow ran in the elections in a block with the Reconstruction of the Communist Movement of Greece (OAKKE) on a platform that included demands for the "immediate unconditional recognition of the Republic of Macedonia" and against "nationalist hysteria and national oppression." Its election center in Athens was burned by fascist thugs in September of this year.

Resistance to the attacks on immigrants is also on the rise. In mid-July, over 4,000 participated at an anti-racist festival organized by some 30 immigrant rights and other organizations. They demanded an end to the deportations of immigrant workers and full legalization with equal rights. This was the biggest such event ever in Athens.

Reflecting the worries in ruling circles over the social tremors the austerity measures of the Simítis regime may cause, former Minister of Transportation Georgios Daskalákis said, "PASOK will be walking into a mine-field.... People have reached the limits of their endurance."

Bobbis Misailides is a member of the Union of Foreign Airline Employees in Athens.  
 
 
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