ATHENS — Communist Party (KKE) leader Dimitris Koutsoumbas in an interview on Saturday to the public broadcaster ERT said that the operation of the schools could have been achieved even in the pandemic "if the government had listened us and had listened the agencies, the teachers and the pupils and had assumed measures on time, before the outbreak of the pandemic.

In terms of KKE's participation in the march for the Polytechnic uprising anniversary on Tuesday 17 November, he underlined that "in the last 47 years, every year, under any conditions it was not a memorial or a laying of wreaths but a claim and this year has the same character, we can't change the context. The Polytechnic never was a governmental feast. The events and the anti-imperialistic march to the US Embassy was not organised by the government but by the labour unions, the students' unions, the political parties and the association of political prisoners and exiles during the junta" he said.

"This is what they will do this year in these special conditions. All the measures will be strictly observed with the use of face masks and antiseptics, keeping the necessary distances and of course we urge people belonging to vulnerable groups or those who are ill to stay at home.