«The decision of the Council of State, which considers the transfer of powers from the City Council to the Finance Committee and the Quality of Life Committee unconstitutional, confirms the attitude and criticism of the KKE to the relevant laws of the ND government,» the KKE said in a statement and added: «Specifically, during the discussion of the laws (4623/2019 and 4625/2019) brought by the government of the Southwest, in the name of the “governability” of the municipalities, the KKE voted against and denounced the specific regulations, which ultimately aim at the unimpeded implementation of urban planning against the needs of the people.
The decisions by the fictitious majorities of the committees further reinforce the opacity in the management of municipal finances and operate within the framework of the policies of strengthening entrepreneurship, privatisation, responsiveness and the priorities of technical programmes with the logic of eligibility, which excludes necessary projects (flood protection, anti-seismic, fire protection, etc.) and infrastructure for the benefit of the people.
These regulations were added to the legislative framework formed by the previous governments, both SYRIZA and PASOK, which gave the municipalities the character of the “local state”, a continuation of the central one, which specifies and implements the unpopular policies for the implementation of urban planning. With these regulations, he changed the way in which the Economic Committee and the Quality of Life Committee are constituted, in order to ensure that the majority in them belong to the party with which the Mayor was elected. It also provided for the transfer of powers from the city council to the Economic Committee, to which decision-making powers of considerable financial importance were transferred, and to the Committee for Quality of Life, to which the power to take decisions relating to traffic was transferred.
«These are the policies currently practiced by the vast majority of municipalities, which are formed by the forces of ND, PASOK-KINAL and SYRIZA», the KKE stresses and concludes its statement: «The forces of Popular Coalition in the municipalities and regions are fighting against this unpopular institutional framework. Together with the workers' - people's movement, they are fighting for the organization of the people, their participation in the struggles, for the assertion of their own needs. They take the lead against every popular problem and are essentially the only opposition in the Municipal and Regional Councils, exposing the consequences of such decisions and demanding solutions for the people.
Working people's families have bitter experience of the policies of governments, regional and municipal authorities. Now they need to join forces with the KKE everywhere, in the unions, in every body of popular struggle, as well as in the elections for the Parliament, the regions and the municipalities, in order to weaken the forces of capital, to strengthen the struggle for everything that torments us, to open the way for radical changes for the benefit of the people.».
