Radical Left Experiments its Policies Using Greeks as Guinea Pigs

The jarring interests of reason and piety [read ideology] Edward Gibbon

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The radical left party of Syriza, led by its green horn, tongue in cheek, know-all adventurist leader Alexis Tsipras, armed with the omniscient Marxist ideology and holding with devotional piety the rosary of communism in both hands, is experimenting its policies using Greeks as guinea pigs. Against all reason and hope, it persists and is determined, if after June 17 it comes to be the new government, one-sidedly to denounce and repudiate the European Memorandum without risking the country’s exit from the Eurozone. Unable to see through the nebulous clouds of their ideology, the materialist Marxists cannot see the reality as embodied in the clear expressions of all European leaders, representing to a high degree the wishes of their constituents respectively, and high technocrats, that such denunciation of the Memorandum would immediately lead to the cessation of all financial help to the stricken country and to the latter’s inevitable return to the drachma and absolute poverty with catastrophic results to the standard of living of the majority of the population. This economic and social break-down of the country would spark a social war of all against all that would crack the foundations of democracy and on whose ruins would be built a fascist state, either of the left or of the right.

Moreover, their hopefulness that the European Union is bluffing and would not dare to turn the financial tap off as such a move would lead to the mutual destruction of Greece and Europe, is a Fata Morgana in view of the fact that all these leaders and technocrats have put their credibility and reputation on the line in regard to the exit, not to mention the other obvious fact that all the Wall Streets, and banks of the world, and evaluative institutions, such as Standard and Poor’s, and Moodies are showing on their financial electronic screens the great possibility of a Greek exit and are making preparations for it. To consider, as Syriza does, that all these political, technocrat, and financial actors are engaging and participating in a grand bluff against Greece, in regard to its exit from Europe, is to be a fugitive from one’s senses; and to ventilate such an idea among the Greek populace, is a gigantic falsehood.

The economic programme of Syriza as presented by its leader Tsipras on May 31, promises a horn of plenty to Greeks with the government’s coffers empty. It promises higher wages, higher pensions, and an extension of unemployment allowances from one to two years, an expansion in the employment of public servants, and full employment in a dateless future, without however indicating where it will find the funds to implement the above measures. Nor does it compute their costs, according to an admission of a prominent economist of Syriza itself. This is unprecedented in the history of electoral campaigns, as pointed out by Antonis Samaras, the leader of New Democracy, when a political party presents its economic policies to the electorate and admitting at the same time that they have not been costed.

This is a populist bag of gifts that only a Santa Claus could deliver to longing and credulous children. Syriza claims falsely that the expenses of these outlays for the above measures will be covered by taxing enterprises, ship-owners, and people on higher incomes, without however specifying the height of these incomes, and by imposing a levy on seven-hundred-thousand households with a net of 2,000 euros. In the present dire recession that the country is in and where enterprises can hardly show even modicum profits in their balance sheets, and where people with higher incomes have been inflicted by a cut of 50% in their salaries(Professor Yanis Varoufakis who teaches economics at Athens University and whose salary was cut by 50%, fled Greece and went to the United States), the claim of Syriza that it will have the funds from these sources to implement its promises, is a swindle of gargantuan magnitude of the Greek people. Moreover, this impossibility of funding its measures from these sources leads to the suspicion, as again pointed out by Samaras, that Syriza has a hidden agenda to impose taxes on ordinary people’s bank deposits and on private property.

Furthermore, Syriza pledges to reverse all previous commitments to privatization and go back to state ownership of all companies that were going to be privatized, and hence continue the increase of bureaucratization, thus bringing back to life all the deadly worms that in the past gnawed and eroded the economic foundations of the country that brought it to its present calamitous state. Also in its foreign policy it commits itself to exit from NATO and seek a new alliance in South America, with such countries like Venezuela and Nicaragua, which, with mathematical precision would lead to the ‘Cubanization’ of Greece as well as leave the country geopolitically defenceless. But this is not surprising since many of Syriza's higher echelons are strong votaries of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Hugo Chavez; birds of a feather flock together.

Syriza’s economic and political manifesto is a draft of dangerous irresponsibility and naivety, doctrinal dogmatism and blindness, and swashbuckling political adventurism at its best. With its policies, the fate of Greece’s future generations will be played on the green tables of a casino with Alexis Tsipras playing high stakes poker--which, according to a latest interview he gave on American television, he loves--with other people’s money, and all he has to lose is Greece’s future.        

             

The Periclean Dimensions of Antonis Samaras as the Future Prime Minister of Greece

By Con George-Kotzabasis—December 10, 2011

We have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring. Pericles

In the present storm-laden dark sky of Greece, a glittering new star has made its appearance which like a beacon of the sky is attempting to navigate the battered ship of Greece into calmer waters and save it from shipwreck. This new star is the leader of the Opposition of the New Democracy Party, Antonis Samaras, who since he has become its leader two years ago, has displayed unprecedented qualities of leadership and economic and political insight and daring, in this critical economic situation that Greece traverses, that only a statesman of Periclean dimensions could exhibit.

The criticism of Samaras from early on as leader of the Opposition of the Papandreou government, which he has depicted as amateurish and inept, has been totally justified. His early warnings that the policies of the socialist government of Papandreou were wrong and the torrent of taxes that the latter rained upon the middle classes would be disastrous for the economy. In October 2009, when Papandreou began his premiership, public debt was 298 billion euros, 125% of GDP. Today it has reached the whopping amount of 360 billion euros, 165% of GDP. Gross National Product in 2009 was 238 billion and presently has shrunk to 218 billion. According to OECD estimates it will decrease even more by 6% in the near future and unemployment will increase to 18.55%, affecting tragically younger people.

Further, Samaras predicted that the first EU Memorandum that imposed draconian austerity measures on Greece would neither decrease the budget nor would it put the economy on a track of recovery. As an economist he cogently argued that in conditions of deep recession austerity measures would exacerbate the economic crisis not dampen it. He was severely criticized and reprimanded when the New Democracy Party voted in parliament against the extreme austerity measures. Moreover, he had the moral strength and political insight not to be tempted to fall to the seductive calls of Papandreou to participate in a unity government to deal with the national crisis. Samaras gave as his strong reasons that since the PASOK Government was refusing to change its economic policies, that followed the blueprint formulated in the European Memorandum without attempting to modify it in certain crucial parts that could deter the further weakening of the economy, and which had failed the country, he, and his party, would not take part in a coalition government merely for the purpose of being an “accomplice” to these flagrantly wrong policies.

Samaras made a series of proposals that he encapsulated in his “Restart of Greece” by which the country could avoid the shoals that would cause its economic sinking. Last May in his Zappeio II Proposal the Leader of the Opposition presented a number of policies that could put Greece on the road of economic recovery and its corollary, the ability to pay off its debts. His restart programme would necessitate a “shock treatment” but with positive results. (a) A severe cut in public spending and on pensions, only above the level 700 euros. (b) A reduction of taxes on household income and businesses and a decrease in VAT in all sectors of the economy particularly in tourism which is pivotal to the Greek economy. (c) The abolition of all means test for the acquisition of a house and on capital repatriation so to inject money in the financial system. (d) The legalization of all buildings constructed without permits-there are more than a million-which will bring substantial increases in state revenue. (e) The state is to pay off all its debts to private individuals thus increasing market liquidity. And banks to commit to the real economy 20% to 30% of the guarantees they receive. This will further increase liquidity in the market and be an incentive to stop capital flight. (f) The state must not make any cuts to the Public Investment Programme with its high multiplier effect that is a powerful instrument to combat recession. (g) The acceleration of denationalization of public owned entities, which the Papandreou government was slow to implement, and the stimulation of the development of property which is the economic engine of the country. All these relief measures will increase state revenue and the Restart programme will balance the budget within just over three years, and start paying off Greece’s debt.

This daring Restart programme is not an abstraction and Samaras is quite aware that to concretize it he has to convince the lenders of Greece, i.e. the EU, of the urgent necessity of making changes to the present economic policies that clearly have failed, if the goals of the Memorandum of 26^th of October, to which he is irrevocably committed, are to be achieved. This task of convincing Greece’s European partners of a change in tack has been eased, as High German officials admit now that the initial programme was wrong.

Finally, Samaras warns (not exactly in the following words) that this contagion that is threatening to engulf the European continent is not only economic and political but also social, and could lead to an explosion of European Spring protests that could not be contained and could transform radically the political landscape of the continent by the reappearance of the infernal star of the swastika in the political constellation of Europe.

But History has shown repeatedly nations at moments of great dangers, produce great and illustrious leaders that saves them at the eleventh hour from destruction and obliteration. From Themistocles to Charles Martel to Winston Churchill, the invasions of barbarians and dictators were defeated by the sagacity, imagination, and moral strength of exceptional leadership. Antonis Samaras from his words and deeds without any doubt belongs to this lineage of leadership. Greece facing the abyss of economic bankruptcy, poverty, and mob rule with the dangers that are historically inherent in such combination, i.e. the resurgence of fascism, has a unique leader in Antonis Samaras that could prevent this stupendous threat from consummating which would consign the country into the doleful state of penury and into the captivity of dictatorial regimes.            

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