The anti-Tsipras ‘expatriation’ and the withdrawal of SYRIZA from the vote on the Education Law

By Niki Zorba

An answer – as it had already been announced and expected – to the questions about the political life of the country being disrupted by SYRIZA, was given to the prime minister by the leader of the official opposition, from the floor of the Parliament, using current issues of the moment (such as the release of D. Lignadis until Court of Appeal) otherwise stating that it is not going to follow the government’s line on the “downhill” of toxicity.

At the same time, however, he announced that SYRIZA will withdraw from the vote on the Ministry of Education bill (generally he will not stay to vote against it) and announced that its abolition will be in his pre-election commitments “and will be put to the judgment of the Greek people ” in the elections.

As regards Christoforos Bernardakis, Mr. Tsipras confirmed in a way the information that led him to be enraged by his vulgar address to the Minister of Education, N. Kerameos, characterizing her as “the scumbag of education”, emptying him, unequivocally.

“The statement of a SYRIZA PS MP was wrong, unfortunate, unacceptable and reprehensible. He immediately retracted and immediately apologized. It obviously does not represent the party or me personally, despite the fact that I am sharp in my political criticism”.

Summing up his speech, Mr. Tsipras said, among other things, about

K. Mitsotakis:

We are not going to pick up the gauntlet of division that Mr. Mitsotakis threw at us. We will oppose the goal of the unity of society against his destructive policies. That’s how we too will disturb you in legality, in composure. Dance the dance of division yourself.

Is it a sign of political morals that anyone who comes here speaks in hametype terms and characterizes his political opponents as scumbags?

Racism is when society feels that there is no fair justice. When you are a man of power, you are a friend of ministers and channel managers, you are surrounded by immunity. Even if you are a rapist of minors like your elected Mr. Lignadis, who will point the finger at us now that the motives of his prosecution were political. This is extortion. The feeling of impunity and injustice conveyed to me yesterday by the parents of Jacques, that the perpetrators of his murder are scandalously free after their conviction and were harassing Magda Fyssa in court.

I was informed, Mr. Syrigos, that you came out of this stage and said that there was no resistance to the Junta but only isolated incidents, that the Polytechnic was a myth built in the post-colonial era. Unprecedented revision of history. And you are a member of the ND, not LAOS or Chrysig Avgi. I await an answer: Is this the official position of N.D.? Do these express you? Or for Mr. Syrigos to withdraw or for K. Mitsotakis to take a position: Or to expel Mr. Syrigos or resign himself. But this is the mutation of the N.D. to the extreme right. I also see the dear cousins ​​of KINAL: Will you form the social democratic government with them?

Ministry of Education bill

we are called to vote on a bill that has a unique feature. None of the most directly interested parties agree with this. The Senates, the Professors’ Associations, all the University Workers’ Federations, the Rectors’ Synod, the students.
Not even DAP, your student faction, agrees.
1000 prominent scientists from many countries sign a protest letter against the threats the public university receives from the attempted “reform”.

It is not only the opposition that disagrees, and the entire opposition, not just the officer.
This is where the entire universe disagrees.

Do Greek universities have problems?
Apparently they have.
But you don’t want to solve these problems.
For which you are largely responsible.
You want to make matters worse by destroying the foundations of the democratic organization and operation of higher education.

How proud are you of the results of your interventions to date?
How successful do you consider this minimum admission basis?
Do you think that you have managed to upgrade the cognitive level of the entrants with this measure?
Really now ;
But look what you came up with:
You left over 40,000 young men and women out of universities and colleges.
And you put half of the country’s regional universities on the road to lockdown.
Your other big intervention the university police.
Police officers at universities instead of teachers.

And the third major intervention is the unaffordable tuition fees at graduate schools, instead of free Education.
Your interventions, however, also define your vision for the education of our children.
You prepare your children for college to do their IB and go to study in some prestigious universities abroad.
The great majority of our people, however, do not belong to your class.
They cannot afford to study in universities abroad.

But you tell us that you want to build a university that will look more like a joint-stock company. To adapt the young men and women to the rules of the market. In the market which, as you tell us, has the ability to be deregulated.
What does this mean;
The state should not intervene, or when it intervenes, it should do so in order to transform labor relations into even more flexible ones.
And universities must adapt to this market.
That is, to give fragmented degrees, partial training, workers without professional rights, without requirements.
Fragmented work, fragmented degrees, fragmented life.
This is your vision.

In other words, you are equating work and education downwards.
And you tell us that this is the new while our vision is the old, the obsolete.

According to a report of the Strategy for Upgrading the Skills of the Workforce and Interfacing with the Labor Market which was approved last week by the Ministry of Labour,
In the period 2020-2021, 111,549 people with a master’s degree left the Greek labor market. With a master’s degree, not with an inability to grasp the basics.
So you don’t want the connection of universities with work.
You want the disconnection of labor from the laws that protect it.

You impose a hyper-centralized and oligarchic management structure.
With a powerful Rector, who is not elected by the faculty members, but by the 11 “elects” of the Council, of which 5 have nothing to do with the university.
With a weakened Senate, with appointed Vice-Chancellors and Deans, with full control of all Committees.

No commitment in the bill that the state will stand by the universities so they can at least meet their inelastic costs.
It is a shame for a co-ordinated state to let its universities rely on sponsorships, postgraduate tuition fees and foreign language undergraduates.

Absolutely no commitment to the unacceptable state of the Departments, since you are not creating new professorships.
We are last in Europe, with a teacher-to-student ratio at half the European average.

We are being led to undermine the professional rights of future graduates, with this plethora of degrees and variations that you are legislating.
And in graduate schools, while with our own regulation the number of free master’s degrees had increased and for the rest there was an exemption from tuition fees for 30% of students, you seek to generalize the increase in tuition fees and dramatically reduce the possibility of free education.

The multiplicity of study programs, multi-splitting and your choice not to fill the positions that fall vacant leads squarely to contract teaching universities. This bill, in our view, will not only hurt the public university. He will finish it.

Repeal Bill

We are committed to putting its abolition before the judgment of the Greek people, in the upcoming election.

To double state funding over four years.
To double the teaching positions over a four-year period, to restore the provision for 1 to 1.
To bring back the free two-year study programs for EPAL graduates. Where EPAL graduates will be enrolled without exams and will be operated by the Universities themselves in collaboration with productive bodies.

Finally, our commitment is to make postgraduate degrees free again.