Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-09-04

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] KKE urges youth to cast 'class vote'

[02] Harsh criticism of two main parties from Alavanos

[01] KKE urges youth to cast 'class vote'

Speaking at a meeting of students at Athens' Panteion University, Papariga accused the two large parties of "hypocritically flattering the younger generation" while making a systematic effort to roll back youth rights and answering youth demands with state repression.

She referred at length to the state of education and the policies for this sector followed in recent years, culminating with the effort to revise the Constitution and change article 16 so as to allow the foundation of privately run universities in the country.

KKE's leader stressed that the opponents of the student movement were not the individual ministers of the education and public order ministries but the entire New Democracy government and the policies followed by main opposition PASOK.

Papariga also underlined that KKE was not anti-ND or anti-PASOK but opposed to parties that served capital and stressed that the two main parties must both suffer a defeat in the elections because their policies were essentially the same.

[02] Harsh criticism of two main parties from Alavanos

According to Alavanos, this was focused on secondary issues and did not address issues concerning farmers, young people, the unemployed and education. He was speaking during a press conference at the offices of the Local Union of Municipalities and Communities of Trikala.

He asked the political parties to focus the pre-election debate on fundamental problems like the generalized concern for the environment, the repercussions of the past summerâs destructive fires and avoiding the degradation of farming land through a national agricultural policy and strategy and, finally, measures to reform the national health system, which he described as the ?great sick man?.

Asked about the possibility of cooperating with another party in the case of a hung Parliament, Alavanos said that this would require having common programme positions.

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