SAGARDS Right wing trounced in Greek polls

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ONLY TWO hours into the tallying-up of the votes, and the head of the outgoing Greek government -George Rallis - conceded defeat for his party, the conservative New Democracy.

Despite the rallying to the New Democracy of all sorts of neo-fascist and recalcitrant monarchist votes, this major party of the ruling class suffered a humiliating defeat.

Its vote sank to about 37%, while the Socialists PASOK, headed by Andreas Papandreou, skyrocketted to 48%, almost doubling the 25% of the vote that this relatively new party obtained in the 1977 Parliamentary elections. The other small political formations of bourgeois liberalism have been decisively land let's hope definitively) obliterated. The only other party that managed to maintain its vote was the pro-Moscow Communist Party (Exterior).

This election result is of enormous significance. In a massive realignment of political forces, the virtual monopoly of political power, which the right wing has, almost as a reflex reaction considered to be its own for the last 50 years, has been overturned.

Yet what different sections of the electorate want from PASOK, and what they will get, will largely determine the future of this. incoming government.

For workers who voted for the left, the inflationprotection of wages promised by the Socialists to enable living standards to keep up with a 25% inflation rate, the unshackling of state controls on the trade union movement and the creation of a comprehensive health and social security system are some of the most crucial issues.

For the many small businessmen who voted für the Socialists, the major concern will be greater subsidies and grants to small enterprises, to avoid the wholesale strangulation that now threatens them from large domestic and overseas monopolies.

In the wake of the international capitalist recession, it is difficult to imagine where the necessary funds for such projects will come from, especially in an economy like Greece's which, despite undoubted changes and advances over the last few decades, remains feeble.

Paymaster

Despite the immediate reforms - the separation of Church and State, civil marriage, divorce, voting rights, the repeal of all sorts of repressive legislation - and the euphoria and relief of the mass of Greek workers at having thrust off their backs the corrupt right-wingers who have ruled for so long, it will in due course become clear that the leadership of PASOK in the end follows only one paymaster - the bourgeoisie itself.

The reaction to these inevitable betrayals by the PASOK leauership 1n the country, in the v rorking class as a whole, and in the left wing of the party itself, will. present enormous possibilities for revolutionaries.

Victor Papandreou