19/01/2024
Staggering rally in Athens: Deafening message: The bill ‘will not pass’!
Statements
On 18 January 2024, tens of thousands of university and school students as well as teachers took to the streets all over Greece, holding mass demonstrations, such as the one in the centre of Athens. They clearly stated the obvious: The new generation rejects private universities and struggles for exclusively public and truly free education for all.
The rally in Athens was one of the most mass rallies of university and school students in recent years!
Thousands of university and school students, with vocational students, teachers and professors, university employees and lecturers on their side, showed that they are many and more powerful in the struggle against the reactionary plans of the government, and sent a clear message that the bill on private universities ‘will not be submitted. The massiveness of the rally was obvious from the beginning, as the meeting point was already crowded hours before the time of the rally. The mass participation was the result of the agitation in schools and universities, with hundreds of militant resolutions from student unions all over the country and hundreds of schools under occupation in Attica.
‘No to private universities, exclusively public free studies, degrees that matter, work with rights’ read the banner of the Student Unions that participated after mass general assemblies and occupations in all the universities of Athens. The school students were on their side with the banner of their Coordinating Committee.
They were joined by parents, teachers and professors, university employees and lecturers, as well as students of art schools since an article of the bill on vocational training (currently being discussed in the plenary session of the Parliament) provides for debasing their degrees.
The large gathering then turned into a sea of people that flooded the main streets of Athens. When the march reached Syntagma Square, in front of the Parliament, in a symbolic gesture, students and pupils, holding books marked ‘for sale’, sent a message to the government that ‘Education is not for sale, it’s our right, won through struggle’.
The mass mobilisation ended in front of the historic building of the Athens Polytechnic, on Patision Boulevard, where student representatives from universities and schools stressed that the rally sent a clear message to the government that ‘this bill won’t be submitted’ and declared their determination to continue the struggle even more relentlessly in schools and universities.
Statement of the GS of the CC of the KKE
While thousands of people were demonstrating against the government’s reactionary plans for the establishment of private universities, the GS of the CC of the KKE, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, was speaking in the plenary session of the Parliament during the debate on the bill on Vocational Education and Training put forward by the Ministry of Education.
“The majority of the world of education have already voted against your bill, despite the bundle of lies and the government propaganda that aims to convince the Greek people and the youth that this unjust bill can supposedly provide a solution to the current impasses that you and the previous governments have created”, stressed the GS of the CC of the KKE.
D. Koutsoumbas strongly criticized both the current condition of education in Greece and the anti-popular plans of the ND government. He also presented some aspects of the KKE’s proposal for public education.
Referring to the youth, the GS of the CC of the KKE noted that “through their struggles they can today be the creators and pave the way for a new life. For a society where the people do not have to look for a job, precisely because their job is safeguarded. And where one’s degree is not just a certificate of qualification, but a guarantee of the right to work. For a society where the needs of the youth are not sidelined for the benefit of the few, but are at the heart of the central scientific planning of the state to ensure that they are met”.
