Friday, Oct. 28, 2011
No Joy in Greece Over the E.U.'s New Deal
By Joanna Kakissis / Athens
Time Magazine
The parade on Friday was supposed to commemorate Greece's resistance during World War II. Seventy-one years ago on this day, Greece refused to let Italy's fascist ruler, Benito Mussolini, bring his troops into the country. Greeks took to the streets chanting "Ohi!" — "No!" — to show that they wouldn't give up their sovereignty to anyone.
But this year many Greeks came to the parade to say "no" to austerity. As schoolchildren in navy-blue and white uniforms walked past parliament in Athens, waving Greek flags to marching-band music, anti-austerity protesters booed riot police and told off their politicians. "We want freedom, not another dictatorship!" they chanted.
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The protesters are clearly not impressed with the landmark deal made early Thursday between European leaders and international lenders to write off half of the face value of Greek debt and give the country another $140 billion in bailout loans. Under the deal, Greece must still implement the austerity measures that parliament has already passed, which include job and wage cuts in the public sector, tax hikes, a controversial new property tax and privatization of state assets.
Many Greeks blame their politicians for the country's debt woes, but the ruling center-left PASOK party has taken the brunt of the criticism for signing on to the pact that exchanged austerity for billions in international bailout loans. Both Prime Minister George Papandreou and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos assured Greeks on Thursday that the new deal means no new austerity measures this year and next.
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But many say the deal means that the government is handing control of Greece's destiny to foreign powers. This sense of losing sovereignty resonates deeply in a country like Greece, which has deep nationalist undercurrents. It has elicited a broad range of responses, ranging from left-wing demonstrators comparing Papandreou's government to the hated 1967-1974 junta to opposition leader Antonis Samaras, who leads the center-right New Democracy party, declaring that "we won't kneel to anyone."
In reality, every European Union and euro-zone country had to give up some of its sovereignty willingly just to join the bloc, says Dimitris A. Sotiropoulos, an associate professor of political science at the University of Athens. But in Greece, "nationalism is the platform that everyone shares in politics," he says. "There's this underlying, strong belief here that Greece is unique. Indeed Greece has fought very, very bitter wars against foreign armies, including the German and Italian armies. And there was a dictatorship that was tolerated by the U.S. So we have a very complicated relationship with foreign powers."
(See more on the Greek Meltdown: Putting the Hell in Hellas.)
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Meanwhile, fringe neo-Nazis took the general sense of discord as an opportunity to join the fray. On Friday, a gang of young thugs beat up anti-austerity protesters in central Athens as well as several Bangladeshi men selling miniature Greek flags for the parade.
Agathi Papanoti, a 31-year-old archaeologist, watched in horror as one of the fascists beat up a friend so badly he ended up in hospital. She fears that the long-dysfunctional state had collapsed under austerity, cutting the wages and pensions of Greeks to the bone and leaving them with the burden. "We're turning against each other, and it's a new civil war," she said. "It's way too many problems for such a small country right now. And I believe that it's all because of the crisis."
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2098138,00.html
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