SARDINIA WITH TSIPRAS

At the end of May European Union  will  renew its Parliament. This elections are very important and people are longing for them.

All over Europe Community Institutions, still a few years ago not censurable, are now felt as the external cause for the economic crisis. Behind the words “economic crisis” there is poverty, mothers who cannot pay school for their children, young couples who cannot settle down, old people living their old age in anxiety and millions of people without a job.

Artisans, traders and farmers have no future in a “market with no limits”, overwhelmed by bureaucracy. For many people today European Union has this meaning. They are not wrong.

The EU treaties and the European Central Bank politics have triggered a downward spiral all over Europe, and especially in the most peripheral areas. Cuts to the welfare state, privatization and competition in cutting salaries produce further poverty and economic recession, instead of creating welfare and jobs.

Left wing parties and movements must contrast these politics. Otherwise,  only right wing and racist organizations will do that.

Different political families will run for the European Elections.

Apart from the racist right,  which rides on these issues with the intention of smashing everything and bring us back to nationalism, there will be the European Popular Party (EPP) and the Socialist European Party.

The first one has almost always had the majority in the European Parliament, and therefore the control of the Community Institutions. EPP is the main responsible for the current state of the European economy. Let’s remember that their main leader is  Mrs Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, who leads a coalition of CDU-SPD, i.e. the centre-right and the centre –left.

The German Martin Schulz,  President of the European Parliement, runs for the Socialist European Party (SEP).

During the past ten years the SEP failed its aims. It did not develop another idea of Europe. Indeed, it theorized the convergence between Socialists and Liberal right in economic and foreign policy.

As a results Social Democrats, either Germans, Spanish, French or Italians,  often failed.

There is an alternative: Syriza. Syriza, whose  leader is Alexis Tsipras,  is the Greek party that strongly contrasts the economic and social destruction the UE is doing in Greece.

Tsipras has been proposed as a reference for all the organized forces, political parties, movements, associations, trade unions, who want to reject the current steering EU gear and rewrite it.

The young Alexis Tsipras, ex town councilman of Athens, is the real political winner of the last general elections in Greece, and now runs for the Presidency of the European Commission European Left.

In Italy several political organisations, trade unions and intellectuals as Barbara Spinelli, are already working for a better future in Europe. We support them.

We want Europe of peoples. We reject Europe of banks, Europe of large retail trade of food industries that produce fake foodstuff, packed full of pesticides. We also reject bureaucrats, who are used to deal with large numbers and do not care about the peculiarities of outlying areas and islands.

In Sardinia these issues are related to a widespread demand of sovereignty and the protection of local products and crafts.

The Italian left has to consider these requests.

The coalition headed by Alexis Tsipras is expected to establish an equal dialogue with all those Sardinian movements, associations and organisations asking for sovereignty, land protection, welfare state, the end of military servitude and a new Mediterranean policy.

Tsipras’ list is the only one which can unite all the movements inspired by the great Sardinian history of democracy and solidarity: “sovranisti” and  “indipendentisti” who recognize the need of (a few) common rules and welfare for all the citizens.

Now we are ready to realize this project.

Enrico Lobina, town councilman (Cagliari City Hall)

Giovanni Dore, candidate for “Rossomori”. (Regional Elections).

Thanks to Maria Luisa Piras for the translation