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Athens News Agency: News in English, 12-02-09
CONTENTS
[01] SYRIZA leader: Political dwarves have condemned Greeks to permanent
poverty
[02] Nationwide labour strike Friday and Saturday
[01] SYRIZA leader: Political dwarves have condemned Greeks to permanent
poverty
AMNA--Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA parliamentary alliance)
leader Alexis Tsipras on Thursday demanded that "the government, the
(EU/IMF) troika and the three parties that support this defamation
leave", charging that "the dependent, disreputable and collapsing
political establishment and the fatal prime minister they chose have
turned over the country as a hostage and subjugated to its lenders for
many decades to come".
In perhaps his sharpest attack on prime minister Lucas Papademos'
interim government and the three political parties (PASOK, ND and LAOS)
supporting it, Tsipras charged that the country was being governed
by "a leadership of political dwarves" who have "brought back the
International Economic Control to manage the country’s bankruptcy,
which they signed, have mortgaged Greece to British law and condemned
our and our children's lives to permanent poverty".amna
He called the interim coalition government a "bankrupt political
leadership that does not have the courage and the integrity to look
the Greeks in the eye", adding that "they are all accountable to the
history of the country and the Greek people".
As for the marathon talks of the premier with the three party leaders,
Tsipras called it a "parody negotiation of the last minute, which
simply ratified, with a melodramatic decor, the destruction of our
national sovereignty and dignity, the degradation of democracy and the
subjugation of the country to the banks, capitalism and the economic
chauvinism of Mrs. Merkel, while at the same time opening wide the road
to Greece's exodus from the euro, bowing to the coercive dilemmas that
it created itself".amna
"We must not let this crime against the Greek people, this crime
against the country, be completed," he said, and expressed hope that the
"package of bankruptcy" will not come to pass, calling for "democratic
and patriotic unity" among everyone and stressing "it is time for the
people to take the matter of social cohesion and democracy into their
own hands".
[02] Nationwide labour strike Friday and Saturday
AMNA--A nationwide 48-hour strike on Friday and Saturday (February 10-11)
was called on Thursday by Greece's two main umbrella federations GSEE
and ADEDY, representing the private and public sectors respectively,
in protest of the new memorandum agreed with the troika.
Protest demonstrations will also be held throughout the two days,
as well as a main rally on Sunday in Athens' central Syntagma Square.
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