ΣΥΡΙΖΑ Oμιλία του Προέδρου Αλ.Τσίπρα στο Πανεπιστήμιου του Όστιν- Τέξας

παρέμβαση του Προέδρου του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ Αλ. Τσίπρα

σε συζήτηση (στρογγυλό τραπέζι) με θέμα :

“Advice to Governments to Come” (Συμβουλές σε μία Μελλοντική Κυβέρνηση)

(ΤΕΞΑΣ – ΤΡΙΤΗ 5/11/2013)

 As we speak here today the troika guys are again in Greece.

Greece is a country with 30% unemployment and 60% youth unemployment.

Despite that, the focus of the government and the troika is to lay off public sector workers and remove any obstacle for layoffs in the private sector.

They also intent to shut down the defense industry and cut pensions even more.

These are measures that will deepen recession and make Greece unable to pay back its debts once again.

However, Mr Samaras, in a public appearance after a long time, promised that Greece will anyway abide to the program.

He claims that there is no alternative.

It was back in the eighties that Margaret Thatcher coined the slogan ”there is no alternative”. She meant to convince us at the time that there was no alternative to neoliberalism.

We believe that there is no alternative to the ending austerity.

After years of deep austerity and catastrophy  we believe that the strategy of devaluation in the hope of export led growth has failed dramatically. That is why we present a plan that restores domestic demand and creates employment.

I asked yesterday. Does anyone believe that Greece repay a total sum of 83 bn in interest?

Does anyone believe that Greece can achieve a primary of 4.5 % annually until 2020?

Even Mr Samaras appeared to be uncertain on whether Greece can go on the markets by may next year. And this is because the terms of a new loan and a new austerity program are currently being negotiated.

The third memorandum is in the making.

This is “the theatre of the absurd”.

From the outset of the crisis, SYRIZA has supported the obvious: that Greece’s  overindebtedness is itself a Eurozone problem. Since a problem is best addressed at the level of its appearance, a European problem requires a European solution.

Ladies and gentleman,

It was some days ago that Greece’s Minister of Finance Mr. Stournaras defended Memorandum as the only credible policy document in the country.

This is rather a political apology than a reflection of political reality.

Every day, SYRIZA is improving the programmatic and policy details in the national plan of productive and developmental reconstruction that we have elaborated already and which will replace the Memorandum.

It is a plan to stabilize both the economy and society at the same time; To put a stop to the free fall of wages and salaries, along with fiscal consolidation.

It is a plan to immediately address the country’ s humanitarian crisis; we will place a priority on financing and overall enhancement of economy sectors of traditional comparative advantages along with new sources of growth, It is a plan to guarantee access to public goods.

SYRIZA’ s overall national plan for the economic , social an ecological reconstruction of the country predicated on three mutually reinforcing pillars.

The first pillar is: stabilization of the economy

We will achieve this through a rise in public revenues by reorganizing the tax system so as to tax high incomes and wealth and fight tax evasion, tax avoidance and transfer pricing.

We will put a stop to the fall in public spending and reorganize it in such a way so as to address the humanitarian crisis that Greece experiences.

The second pillar is to overcome the humanitarian crisis by ear-marking public fund to that emergency goal, as I have just mentioned.

The third pillar is to restructure the productive base of the economy. The goal would be to form a model of development, generating decently paid stable employment, away from past practices which sunk Greece into the crisis.