Guardian
May 7, 2012
Austerity was the big loser in the Greek elections on Sunday. The two main Greek parties, who endorsed the austerity pact signed last year, together got just over one-third of the vote. This is an extraordinary rebuke given that, between them, these parties have governed Greece since the end of the dictatorship in 1976.
On the anti-austerity side, a leftwing coalition came in second with around 17% of the vote. More ominously, a far-right anti-immigrant party, which is also anti-austerity, received almost 7% of the vote.
It is important for people elsewhere in the world, and especially in Europe, to understand that the Greek voters were not just being cranky kids who refuse to take their medicine. There is no doubt that Greece's government and economy were poorly managed in the years leading up to the crisis. However, the current path of austerity does not offer the country a path to a better future. The current path of austerity is simply a path of pain as an end in itself.
This can be seen from examining the official projections. The IMF now projects that 2012 will be Greece's fifth successive year of economic contraction, with 2013 being a year of stagnation. Even with growth projected to resume again in 2014, Greece's per capita income is still projected to be more than 8% lower than it was a decade earlier. Its unemployment rate, which is currently hovering near 20%, is still projected to be almost 15% in 2017. And its debt to GDP ratio is projected to be 137% in five years – far higher than it was at the onset of the crisis.
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