ELECTION RESULTS The May 11th 1958 parliamentary elections upset the plans of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. The EDA, legal camouflage of the Greek Communist Party, brought off a brilliant victory by winning the majority in the country's biggest urban centres, and the greatest number of votes on the national scale, arriving just after the ERE party of Karamanlis, the present premier. The election law saw to it that the first two parties would benefit scandalously by their position so as to share between them the greatest number of parliamentary seats. of the EDA's reaching second place (instead of the bourgeois party of the liberals, as had been expected), it had, with 24.3 % of the votes, a right to 79 parliamentary seats (out of 300!). The EDA's victory is, however, a real one. Compared to the 1956 elections, it won 50 % more votes and won in all the big cities: Athens, the Piræus, Salonika, Volos, Larissa,
The fact that it was forced to present itself at the elections alone, without the compromising alliance with the reactionary party of Markezinis (since he rejected the alliance), far from losing it votes, on the contrary contributed to polarizing the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist current of the masses around its banner. In voting for the EDA, the masses voted above all against the poverty policy of the Karamanlis government and servile submission to the dictates of American imperialism. The reaction, panicked by the election results, is now trying to neutralize them by every means. In order to reduce the number of deputies elected by the EDA, the government wants to invalidate their election by arguing that the EDA is an alliance and not an autonomous party with a right to the advantages of the election law, etc. And furthermore, to terrorize the masses who voted for the EDA, the government is again stepping up measures of police repression. The masses, however, stimulated by the election victory, are disposed to fight for their democratic and economic demands. The main obstacle to their militant regroupment remains the arch-opportunist parliamentary policy of the EDA, centred round the slogan of the "Popular Front" with the bourgeois parties of the opposition, in order to influence particularly the foreign policy of the Greek government.
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