COALITION OF THE RADICAL LEFT

STATEMENT OF THE PRESIDENT OF SYRIZA

ALEXIS TSIPRAS

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With their vote today, the citizens have opened a new course for local and regional self-government.

There is no historical precedent of a party in power finding itself left out of the second round at the elections in the country’s biggest region and the country’s biggest municipality.

The results in Attica and Athens, respectively, which remained unanticipated by all opinion polls, but also the challenges put up by SYRIZA in claiming a number of regions and dozens of municipalities across the country, elevate us into a powerful political factor in the field of self-government, too.

They are also forming a new arrangement in the country’s local and regional self-government map.

This coming Sunday, both the city of Athens and the Attica region will exceed all expectations and so they are going to turn the page.

The prime minister has a little while ago conceded that the outcome in the local and regional elections indicate that what hangs in the balance of the European Parliament ballot box next week is the continuation of the memorandum governments.

He is absolutely right.

The 25th of May elections for the European Parliament will constitute the referendum on the memorandum which never took place in this country.

It will be the referendum on whether our homeland will regain its dignity and its voice in Europe.

That is the struggle we are inviting all citizens to join in, no matter what their preference was in the local and regional elections.

Because the struggle for dignity and for life encompasses all Greek men and women alike.

We must all oppose, with the stability deriving from popular power and unison, those who are blackmailing us into instability.

We must all meet the calls for abstention and apathy with our sustained democratic participation.

Today the citizens have taken the first step.

Next Sunday may prove to be the first day of a new era.

Our country is going to send a strong and clear message to Europe and to the world, so the more of us become its co-signers through our vote and participation, the stronger and clearer that message will be.

It’s a single message:

Greece belongs to no one but to its own people.

Therefore it is entitled to chart its own course and policy based solely on the benefit and the interest, the needs of its people.

I am certain that next Sunday our vote won’t just make a difference to our country.

It will change our country.

SYRIZA press office, 18/05/2014