Democracy

Thousands gathered to watch SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras give his victory speech in front of Athens University on the night of Jaunary 25, after SYRIZA won the Greek elections with more than 36% of the vote.

“Greece is leaving behind the destructive austerity, fear and authoritarianism. It is leaving behind five years of humiliation and pain,” SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told a joyous crowd of flag-waving supporters after the radical left party won a large victory in the January 25 elections.

Green Left Weekly/s Vivian Messimeris spoke with SYRIZA activist and pensioner Sissy Vovou in Athens about the effects of austerity and the hope a SYRIZA government brings. You can read all of the Green Left reporting from Greece here and follow the Green Left live blog on the elections here. What impact have the austerity measures had on you?

Welcome to Green Left's live election blog for the Greek Elections! Dick Nichols, Vivian Messimeris and Athanasios Lazarou will be updating live from Athens throughout the day. Voting has just begun in Athens and the big news is that the Coalition of the Radical Left party, SYRIZA, are widely believed to be set for a historic victory over the current New Democracy government. Led by the young and charismatic Alexis Tsipras, SYRIZA are set to become the first left wing party to hold power in Europe for decades and will be the first anti-austerity party to come to power in the Eurozone.

A crowd of about 80 people gathered to hear SYRIZA candidates speak at an outdoor meeting held in the suburb of Ambelokipi. Several candidates spoke passionately about the need for change, the need for action and the need for self-reliance.

Vivian Messimeris is part of the Green Left Weekly team covering the elections in Greece, which polls give radical left group SYRIZA a strong chance of winning on January 25. She spoke to Hara Petsiou, a cleaner sacked from her job at the finance ministry. The sacked cleaners are fighting for their jobs.

Today we visited one of the solidarity clinics that operates in the suburb of Peristeri. We met with some of the volunteers that work in the clinic that included two doctors as well as other activists.

An estimated 33,000 people marched through the Basque city of Donostia on January 17 to protest ongoing Spanish state repression against civil rights activists and lawyers in the Basque Country. Marching under a large banner reading “Human Rights, Resolution, Peace”, the demonstration included members of the Basque pro-independence left coalition EH Bildu, trade unions and supporters of Basque political prisoners.

Jonathan Sri, Greens candidate for the seat of South Brisbane, joined Evan Verner to talk about the state of politics in Queensland and Australia, what made him run as a politician and his views on different political issues. In this interview, Sri discusses his views on politics and how music has influenced his view of the world. * * * The first time I saw Jonathan Sri was at a rally where he was on stage delivering one of his slam poems. "This is Queensland, where no man is carried we like our blacks in jail and our gays unmarried

BABY FEROUZ AND HIS FAMILY RELEASED FROM DARWIN DETENTION Baby Ferouz Myuddin and his family have been released from detention in Darwin. Ferouz was born in Brisbane two months after his Rohingya parents arrived on Christmas Island seeking asylum. The family have been involved in a long-running legal battle with the government over whether the boy could apply for a protection visa as he was born in Australia. The government argued that he could not because he was an unauthorised maritime arrival and the Federal Court agreed.

Ozgur Amed is a journalist, columnist, teacher, and activist from Diyarbakir in south-eastern Turkey. He spoke to Dylan Murphy, in conjunction with Rojava Report, about the democratic revolution underway in predominantly Kurdish Rojava in the Syrian state ― opposing both the Assad regime and fanatical Islamic State (IS). Despite sustained attacks by IS on Kobane in Rojava, resistance fighters liberated most of the city ― and Rojava's fascinating and inspiring experiments in direct democracy live on.

A study conducted by Oxfam and released on January 19 highlighted the widening gap between rich and poor, showing that by 2017 the world’s richest 1% would own more than half of the world’s wealth. The study, titled Wealth: Having it all and wanting more, was released to coincide with the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. It analysed data from Credit Suisse and Forbes about the makeup of the 1% and the global distribution of wealth.