Polytechnic: Back to 1999 and the banned rally against Clinton – KKE against Chrysochoidis



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the current war scene that the government and mounted police against the KKE in the center of Athens only has proportions to the blow of the 1999 demonstration against the Clinton visit.

Common benchmark with ND and PASOK

Never before in post-political history has there been such a police coup at a rally of any parliamentary party, except in 1999 and again then it was November and coincided with the days of its celebration. Polytechnic.

A common element is also the fact that the then rally was taken over by the KKE and was attended by other parties such as the then SYN and DIKKI as well as forces from the extra-parliamentary left, while a common point of reference in these two events it’s … Michalis Chrysochoidis.

In 1999, Michalis Chrysochoidis was Minister of Public Order with the PASOK government and Prime Minister Costas Simitis, today he has the same ministerial portfolio with the ND government and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

The backdrop of 1999

Essentially 21 years apart, Michalis Chrysochoidis and KKE face off on the road for the second time in the country’s post-political history. Then with a PASOK government today with a ND government.

The scene is similar. Days in November 1999 after Ocalan’s surrender and NATO’s war against Yugoslavia last spring of that year.

Clinton’s visit

In this context, anti-American anger was expressed with the willingness to disapprove of the visit of then US President Bill Clinton to Athens (who would continue his trip to Ankara).

Indeed, it was then that an American president first publicly admitted that the United States had supported the colonels’ coup in 1967 and their seven-year dictatorship in Greece.

It was November 19 when Bill Clinton landed at Hellinikon airport, then headed, in the middle of a forbidden city, to the Presidential Palace for the reception in his honor.

The initiative and the plaster

At the same time, in Syntagma Square, at the initiative of the KKE and with the participation of other political forces, there were tens of thousands of protesters who demanded to go to the United States Embassy in Queen Sofia to protest for two reasons.

One was against Clinton’s visit and the second was to break the then government’s ban on any meeting that would upset the “planetary leader.” In fact, as the then publications report, once again “Athens had entered the cast.”

The negotiations and the blockade

Prior to the beating of the police, who had isolated Queen Sofia at the level of Parliament with MAT cages, there had been telephone negotiations from the street between the then general secretary of the KKE, Alekas Paparigas, and Michalis Chrysochoidis, who they failed. of the KKE blocks to break the siege, the Police launched an incredible pursuit in the alleys of the center of Athens that reached Monastiraki, Metaxourgio and Kolonos.

Virtually the entire municipality of Atenas, the historic center, drowned in chemicals and police violence that indiscriminately hit young people, the elderly, women and children.

In fact, then the KKE characterized the then government of PASOK and Simitis as “the most dangerous government our country has known in recent decades.”

Similarities and differences

21 years later, in a way, the history of 1999 repeats itself and relives, starring again by the KKE and Michalis Chrysochoidis, and in the context of a prohibited demonstration – again in November – in the direction of the United States embassy and in the context of the messages of the Polytechnic and the seven years of dictatorship of the Aprilians. .

The only difference is that there was no pandemic then and it was a large demonstration led by executives and parliamentarians of the KKE, while today the police deviations took place within the framework of a symbolic mobilization in which health measures were observed in an exemplary way and not government policies and prohibitions.

If there is another possibility, it is that then the KKE tried to break the police cordon to continue the course, while now it has not carried out such a maneuver.

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