This leaflet was written by the Trotskyist Party of Cyprus in May of 1949 and was published in the newspaper 'Worker' [Εργάτης]. The present file is a re-publication located in the magazine Within the Walls, Issue 35.

The program of Pavlos Modinos (Trotskyist Party of Cyprus), candidate in the municipal elections of 1949 in Limassol (from the newspaper ‘Worker’ [Εργάτης], 14/05/49)

COMRADES and FELLOW SUPPORTERS,

On the 22nd of May, the people of Limassol will go to the polls to elect their new Municipal Council. But before the workers, and generally the laborers and oppressed cast their vote in them, we have to take into consideration that those to whom we will assign to manage the economic and financial concerns of the Municipality, will be none other than the executioners and practical enforcers of the proposals of the foreign Government dominating our land, for as long as the anti-democratic legal provisions which concentrate all executive powers in the hands of the Commander of each province, remain valid.

This should become known to all those that falsely believe that the Municipal elections are a democratic right, through which the people will be able to solve their municipal problems.

Our Party is entering these elections because it has the obligation to explain to the masses the political significance of the elections; and reveal the reasons that have pushed the Government to replace the appointing; with the electoral system in Cyprus. The reasons that have pushed the Government towards this action are not the ones that many believe, but rather to blind the masses and mainly to throw the working class into sterile and barren and harmless struggles. In struggles that pull away the masses from their everyday class problems. In struggles that soften the class struggle in Cyprus.

Furthermore, our Party participates in these elections because it considers them as a rare opportunity offered to us to unmask the betrayal committed upon the Cypriot people by the two competing political formations, and to develop our own Communist program amongst the working and oppressed masses. In these elections, the votes of the people are claimed by two competing political parties.

The bourgeoisie is concentrated in one of them, having as its political leadership the people that for the past 70 years remained attached on the sterile slogan “Enosis and only Enosis” [Union with Greece]. On a slogan which the topographical and geographical location of our land changes it into a continuous refusal towards the need for the materialization of improved conditions of life, because under the slogan “Enosis and only Enosis”, the stagnation and sedation of the Cypriot people is cultivated, with their everyday economic and political demands remaining sidelined. All those who have received titles and medals from the Government of England and His Majesty have been concentrated around this Party.

In the other party, that has long now been presenting itself as “left-wing”, all the refuse of the right, all the petit-bourgeois and superficial elements, all the new opportunist distorters of Marxism, and generally all those that couldn’t establish their social status through their own worth and their own capacity, are located. Amongst them, the “leaders” of the workers and farmers hold a special place, as by the use of their leftist phraseology, successfully manage to deceive the masses, to drag them into sterile and anti-class struggles, into struggles that soften the class struggle in Cyprus, into struggles that do not harm the bourgeois interests, struggles like tomorrow's Municipal elections in Cyprus.

In front of these two competing parties, the Party of the 4th International in Cyprus sets its own Revolutionary Communist Program for the liberation of the proletariat from oppression and exploitation. Our Party, despite its numerically limited power, is not afraid to declare the truth regarding these elections; and is not afraid to emphasize that it can never come to terms with the foreign dominant power and with its covert and overt collaborators. Our Party will struggle either inside; or outside the Municipalities for the execution of our program, mobilizing all the pioneering elements of the Working Class; and all of those who believe in the idea of Socialism in our land. Our Party will struggle for full self-governance, so that the Cypriot people will become the lords of their own house and be freed from imperialist exploitation, free to decide their own future.

Our Party struggles for a complete collaboration with our neighbors, founded upon our common fate and equal rights, and sets as a basis for the political question the proportional electorate system, so that the minorities will be represented in the governance of the place, a necessary precondition for the development and progress of the Cypriot people.

Our Party struggles for the granting of social security, to the level that would protect and secure every worker from an accident, a disability, old age, sickness, as well as for the granting of allowances to employees, regardless of them being formally or informally employed.

Our Party struggles for the granting of the right to vote to women; and for women’s participation, with equal rights to those of men, as a social factor, in every cultural project and in the governing of this place.

And for: The granting of the right of complete freedom of expression, press and assembly, for the enactment of a protecting and synchronized labor legislation, for free accommodation for the homeless, the access of water and electricity for lighting to the poor, for the free total education, both higher and elementary, of the poor, for the creation of a first-aid station and of a Municipal Hospital, wherever does not exist today, that would correspond to the contemporary needs of the population, with free treatment for all workers.

COMRADES and FELLOW SUPPORTERS,

Not all problems of the working class can be resolved with the enforcement of this program. For only when the workers overthrow with their firsts the current social system in order to build Socialism in our country, they will be rid of oppression and exploitation, poverty and unemployment.

But militant struggles are needed for the prevalence of Socialism, class struggles, struggles that are uncompromising, with the proletariat leading all of the oppressed.

This road is long and difficult.

The proletarians, however, have nothing to lose apart from their chains.

And they will win a whole world.

Our Municipal Councilor candidate,

PAVLOS MODINOS