May 13, 2012
For the better part of six months now, mainstream politicians in Greece and their financial backers in northern Europe have threatened the country’s austerity-whipped citizens with a do-or-die proposition: suffer the short-term pain of government cutbacks or accept the longer-term distress, not to mention ignominy, of life outside the euro.
But now, as Greece faces yet another year of its economy shrinking by 6 percent and with the February unemployment rate hitting 21.7 percent, a growing number of Greeks have rejected this as a false choice.
Instead, they argue that they can have it both ways by staying in the euro and rejecting the harsh budget-balancing measures Europe has demanded in return for the money Greece needs to remain solvent.
That, at least, was the message of the markets-rattling election result on May 6 in which the two dominant parties that had signed off on the terms of Greece’s 130 billion euro bailout deal took a drubbing.
Rising to the fore as the country’s second-most popular party was Syriza, a coalition of left-leaning parties that promised to keep Greece in the euro and, among other things, increase wages, halt public sector layoffs and repudiate Greece’s debt.
For the guardians of the monetary union in Europe — not to mention Greece’s political establishment — it is the most dangerous of notions.
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