Independent
February 19, 2012
Greeks expect to agree a deal with the Eurozone leaders tomorrow that will cede much of their country's independence. Greece will become an economic – and to a large extent a political – colony of Germany and its allies. Berlin will have a say in everything from the choice of prime minister to the types of medicines dispensed by pharmacies.
In return for €230bn, made up of €130bn in fresh loans and €100bn in write-downs on privately held Greek government bonds, Greece is relieved from its immediate debt burden. But the money does not go to the Greek government, still less to the Greek people. It simply leaves them to live off the money they earn.
For all the television pictures of rioting protesters, clouds of tear gas and burning buildings in central Athens over the last week, a striking feature of the political landscape is the lack of resistance to the German terms. The Greek political elite sound and look stunned, grudgingly surrendering to the demands of the Troika (EU, IMF and European Central Bank), but bereft of ideas about what else to do.
The two political parties that have dominated Greek politics for 30 years, the centre-left Pasok and the conservative New Democracy, do not come out well from the crisis. Tasos Telloglou, Greece's top investigative journalist at Skai TV who has exposed many corruption scandals, describes the members of parliament as "fat and lazy [people who] only worry about how to get back to where they were four years ago before the crisis". He says both ruling parties, which have alternated in power since the fall of the military junta in 1974, have privately agreed to continue their coalition after the next election, which is expected in 10 weeks' time.
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