"Povos Unidos contra a Troika" - 1 de junho - 4

Em 1985 José Afonso – o poeta, andarilho e cantor – numa entrevista a Viriato Teles publicada no semanário "SE7E", avisava:

"O que é preciso é criar desassossego. Quando começamos a procurar álibis para justificar o nosso conformismo, então está tudo lixado! Acima de tudo, é preciso agitar, não ficar parado, ter coragem, quer se trate de música ou de política. E nós, neste país, somos tão pouco corajosos que, qualquer dia, estamos reconduzidos à condição de homenzinhos e mulherzinhas. Temos é que ser gente, pá!"

Hoje, em 2013, no país de uma coisa chamada “troika” continua, infelizmente, a haver lugar para se cantar os “Vampiros”. É por isso que a Associação José Afonso vem por este meio declarar o seu apoio à Manifestação de dia 1 de Junho “Que se Lixe a Troika”. 

Juntos seremos muitos, juntos seremos alguém! 

Setúbal, 28 de Maio de 2013 

Pela Associação José Afonso (AJA) 

Francisco Fanhais

The attacks on working class people are happening across Europe. Mass unemployment, the reduction in welfare benefits, the lack of security in every aspect of life – all this demands a response. The old parties of the centre left are now compromised by their support for the austerity programme. Their idea of a compassionate capitalism that can be made to work in the interests of all is clearly a fraud. Predictably, when faced with this truth, they line up with the parties of the Right. 

We need to start again. We need new parties of the Left that understand and defend the interests of ordinary people. We need to unite in this project across Europe. We can only succeed if we make a reality of the ‘Internationale’!

With good wishes and solidarity,

Ken Loach

I hope everyone in Europe will come out on the first of June to protest against the troika.
Why must we protest against the troika? Because here we are up against three institutions, all of which are completely undemocratical.
The first is of course the International Monetary Fund which by the way have said that they know now that austerity is going to create huge unemployment and be extremely costly to the economy and not promote growth at all. They now this. They've studied it. They published. But they are still not changing policy.
The second is the European Central Bank, again, appointed. The head of it is a very smart man, Mario Draghi which was also an employee of Goldman Sachs. Who do you think he is going to priviledge in his decisions? Will it be the people or will it be the banking system?
The third is off course the European Commission, and these people are not elected either. The three of them together are taking onto their own shoulders the policy decisions of member countries. No one has ever signed up for that.
Now we have treaties that are putting us in a straitjacket, we are told that the European Commission and these other unelected people will deal with our won budgets, with our own debt and repayment system, that they are going to deal with everything all the things that are the most important functions of a government and particularly of a parliament which we have elected. They may be good, they may be bad, but at least we have elected them.
We have to say no to this destruction, this systematic destruction of democracy. We have to say no to the policies that these people are putting in place, because these policies are invented in the name of the financial industry, the corporate sector and a very tiny minority of europeans, for whom the crisis is an opportunity to enrich themselves. This is an anti-democratic, anti-people and anti-human policy which all europeans must oppose, because if they don't, they'll be the next victims.

Susan George