Mobilization of the Cypriot people against austerity and the Memorandum of Troika
More than 10,000 people gathered in Nicosia streets on the 14th of December, in one of the bigger mobilizations that have taken place in Cyprus during the last years, condemning the austerity measures, the demolition of the workers’ conquests and the plans for privatizations. The mobilization was organized by the majority of the Cypriot trade unions (PEO, DEOK), EKA (the Agriculture Organization), PSEM (Secondary Education Student Union), Universities’ students’ unions and EKYSI (pensioners union). AKEL and EDON backed and participated actively in the mobilization that had taken place outside the Finance Ministry and afterwards in front of the Presidential Palace.
The voice of the most affected social strata was clearly heard on the mobilization: workers, farmers, unemployed, vulnerable social strata, students and pensioners. They all raised their voices against austerity policies that are being followed as a result of the Eurogroup decisions of last April that led to the destruction of the banking sector, the shrinking of the real economy and the introduction of Cyprus in Troika’s Support Mechanism. Since then, Cyprus has been used as a guinea-pig of the Eurozone in its despaired effort to find a new way of dealing with the vicious cycle of public debt that several European countries have been entrapped during the last years as a result of the EU-IMF policies. The puppet for implementing the experiment in Cyprus has been the Cypriot right-wing government that signed the entrance of Cyprus in Troika’s “Support Mechanism”. The government, without any consultation with the social forces, is moving unrestrained to the implementation of the neoliberal recipe of austerity and privatizations.
The massive participation of people and organizations in the mobilization has given the message that the huge mobilization was just the beginning of a social struggle that it is going to be continued. Besides, the results of the neoliberal recipe are known and expected since we have seen them elsewhere: a vicious circle of austerity-recession-debts-loans. The message to the government and the EU was clear: their policies will not pass without social resistance and struggle – an alternative progressive path is possible.
