Greece is in pains. Snaps and seething
anger are spontaneous there now. There, the suffering people's acts reflect
only a part of the dire situation: “ Greece is on the brink of default, 16
months after it received the biggest bailout in western history” and “a
populace exhausted by the [austerity] measures.” Rumor of a multi-trillion euro
grand plan to save the eurozone being prepared by European officials circulates
while incidents of despair, destitution and protest provide a partial scene of
the society.
In Greece , the number of suicides has increased, surging up by
40% in a year. The help lines overflow with calls: 5,000 in the first eight
months of 2011 compared with 2,500 for the entire last year. ( The
Telegraph , Sept. 26, 2011 & guardian.co.uk , Sept. 24, 2011
)
Shop closures in the country's Attica region that includes
Athens have reached 15% since the crisis began. Of the 3,421 stores sampled in
a study in the region, 505 have been closed down, the study by the National
Confederation of Hellenic Commerce informs. Citing the study conducted in July
19-30 daily Kathimerini reports: in central Athens , 215 businesses
out of 1,252 have been closed. Clothing stores got the most brunt. In areas,
the closure rate was 25%. ( Greek Reporter , Aug. 11, 2011 )
“A new underclass has appeared: in the homeless and hungry who
roam the streets; in the spiraling number of drug addicts; in the psychiatric
patients ejected from institutions that can no longer offer them a place; in
the thousands of shop owners forced to close and board up businesses; in those
who forage through municipal rubbish bins at night; and in the pensioners who
make do with rejects at fruit and vegetable markets.” The income of the average
household has dropped by 50%. ( guardian.co.uk , op. cit.)
“At the doors of small charities, queues of single men –
ranging from Iraqis to Somalis to Nepalese – form in the early morning to
receive free food or medical treatment. Now, to their intense anger, some
Greeks are being forced to join these queues: 39 per cent of the country's under
24s are unemployed.” ( The Telegraph , op.cit.)
Austerity measures are pushing the people to protest. A 48-hour
strike by all transport workers is expected within days. Days back, the Athens
metro, tram and suburban rail workers went on a 24-hour strike; buses and
trolleys stopped operating for hours; air traffic controllers refused to work
overtime. Greek police force's Special Guards unit hung a giant black banner:
“Pay day, day of mourning.”
Students on September 25 interrupted the state television news.
“There has been an occupation at the state television channel NET”, a
government spokesman informed. The youths held up a banner: “Stop watching and
get out onto the streets”. ( AFP , Sept. 25, 2011 ) Students are
occupying more than 30 schools for weeks. The authority has asked the
protesters to stop the occupations and reopen the schools. ( GR ,
Sept. 25, 2011 )
The situation at universities and technological institutes
“continues to be chaotic” as a result of the new education law.
Students belonging to the Communist Party blocked the entrance to the building
of the University of Athens rectorate. The Technical University of Crete,
the Panteion University and schools of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki are
occupied by students. They hung banners and shouted slogans against the
participation of enterprises in research programs of university, and the new
law. They planned the same step in the Technological Institutes of Athens and
Piraeus , and in other universities in Athens and other cities. Students are
organizing general meetings in universities. September's exam in the University
of Patras was postponed so that general assemblies of students could take
place. ( GR , Aug. 30, 2011 )
Quoting the education minister the newspaper Ta Nea informed
that for this school year, 600 teachers would be appointed while
6,000 would be retiring, and the number of substitute teachers would be
decreased by 50% in comparison with last year. The minister “assured” that
there would be no vacancies at schools. She warned that 2,000 schools would be
merged and all the teachers would have full working hours. ( GR , Aug.
18, 2011 )
Thousands of cab drivers demonstrated outside the Greek
Parliament in late-July. Cab drivers organized strike blocking ports and
airports on the islands of Crete and Corfu to protest against government plans
to deregulate the taxi sector, a key demand of creditors. The cab sub-sector is
one of 135 areas of interference to meet the EU-IMF bailout terms.
The union representing about 800,000 civil servants planned to
strike in case their wages are cut further. Their salaries have already been
slashed by up to 30% since last year. They began working an extra 30 minutes
each day, increasing work-week to 40 hours from 37.5. ( GR , Aug. 12,
2011 )
Crime and environment of lawlessness, a variety of challenge to
status quo, is spreading. “Thefts and break-ins almost doubled between 2007 and
2009. Hostility to migrants […] has become widespread and unconcealed.” ( The
Telegraph , op. cit.) Incidents of arson in different areas of the country
over the last few months have been reported by the local press. The young in
growing numbers are either leaving the country to find jobs or going back to
the rural areas. It is being considered as “the biggest emigration wave since
the 1960s.”
There is, “a lot of uncertainty, […] a lot of fear. For the
first time in decades, people are really frightened. They're afraid of the
future” said Yannis Caloghirou, an economics professor at the National
Technical University of Athens. “Greeks feel like they are in a bad dream”,
said Fotini Tsalikoglou, a prominent psychology professor. “A common thread
that unites people is the experience of fear and desperation.” A collective
sense of depression, analysts said, has also set in. This sense is more
dangerous than the social tensions threatening to tear the country apart. ( guardian.co.uk
, op. cit.)
“In Athens , panic is sketched not only on the faces of those
who have become increasingly impoverished [… P]anic was heard in the voices of
the ruling elite. ‘People, justifiably, think the crisis is what we're going
through now: cuts in wages, pensions and incomes, fewer prospects for the
young,' said the Greek finance minister […], looking visibly drained […‘T]he
crisis will be […] the complete collapse of the economy, institutions, the
social fabric and the country's productive base.' Greeks no longer believe what
their politicians say…. The death of faith in the future is the biggest fear.
‘The worst part is perhaps psychological because there is no light at the end
of the tunnel, no source of hope,' said Dr Thanos Dokos who directs Eliamep, a
thinktank in Athens .” (ibid.)
Tale of a Family
Dmitris Andreou, a businessman, and his wife Mary, an English
teacher, find their savings exhausted, and disposable income dropped by about
50% in two years. In some days, they only buy the basics and in others, they
are not able to buy even those. They have to count “cents to decide between
buying bread, milk or butter.” They don't buy clothes any more. “People don't
go out. There is simply no money around out there”, Mary informs. They had to
cancel cable TV subscription. The chances of a university education for their
school-going two daughters are evaporating. “Right now though, they have more
pressing problems. At the two girls' secondary school, the autumn term has
started without textbooks. The pupils have been handed CDs instead.” ( The
Telegraph , op. cit.)
Bigger Danger
The type of the situation carries “bigger danger to the future
of Greece . People are switching off: from politics, from the mass media, from
social life. ‘We would like to see the politicians executed,' says Maria, not
smiling as she delivers the joke. ‘Most people are saying this: politicians
deserve capital punishment […]' ‘We can't watch the television news any more,'
says Dmitris…. ‘If you watch it, with the constant uncertainty, it can make
your psychology very low. […] I don't trust the media any more.' ‘It feels like
we're in a post-war situation,' says Mary. ‘There's no optimism; we don't know
what happens next. We just try to survive.'” (ibid.)
Antonis Papayiannidis publishes Economic Monthly .
Antonis warns: ‘In an almost detached way people have just watched the
catastrophe happening to them. They were very displeased but they did not
erupt. They became withdrawn and they are still withdrawn. But it could erupt
very quickly, because the feeling of helplessness is very intense right now -
in a way that makes the petrol bombs and barricades of June look pathetic.'
(ibid.)
Education Reform
As another blow, changes have been initiated in higher
education. Teachers and students have protested the state education reform law.
Athens Polytechnic teachers called a 48-hour strike. The students are
organizing general assemblies to assess the situation and to decide on their
next move. The University of Athens has dismissed the bill. Many
universities have already asked the vigilance of the
academic community. The Polytechnic Schools of Athens and Crete
postponed the September exams as the students' unions meetings will take place.
The University of Crete decided to follow any legal procedures against the new
law. ( GR , July 20, 2011 )
Nine hundred world famous academics from 43 countries including
Noam Chomsky expressed their opposition to the policy followed by the
government in higher education in Greece and their
solidarity to their Greek colleagues. They said: The reform having devastating
consequences in higher education undermines the prospect of research and
teaching within Greek universities and will be another blow to the afflicted
Greek society and economy. They proposed adequate public funding of higher
education. ( GR , Aug. 20, 2011 ) The left wing political parties'
supporters consider that the law will destroy the universities, and undermine
critical thought, the scientific knowledge and the ability of students to fight
for their rights. ( GR , Aug. 27, 2011 )
The system, it seems, prefers a single option in the face of
its crisis: press down the common people, encroach their spaces and hand over
the loot to big capital. The crisis, it seems, appears as a boon to capital as
it creates its “logic” for survival.
An Exhibition
And, there is an art exhibition from October 5 in Athens to
raise public awareness of children's and adolescents' health: “Children and
Youth, Voices and Whispers”. But the system is failing to listen to the murmur
under the surface.
For capitalism, the present day Greece is almost unique. The
system encountered debt problem in its periphery. But, here, the case is a
developed capitalist country near to the center. Contradictions are active
among the dominating “partners”, actually contenders, of the system having
stakes in Greece . All the “partners” are trying to secure and expand
respective interest. It's a partnership in competition. None of the “partners”
have capacity to initiate actions independently. All the contenders need all of
them. It's a unity of disunity. Within the Greek ruling elites, dissent will be
heard, and fractures will appear. That will be a contradiction between
interests, not a reflection of sense of dignity. But they will remain united on
the fundamental question of common destiny: accumulate, even in distress
condition.
Further austerity measures will “assist” anguish and
frustrations overwhelm public life. Apathy, inertia and a desperate psychology
will cohabit. The state, the maharaja s – the World Bank, the IMF, the
bankers, the Brussels bureaucrats – and broadly, the system will come under
scrutiny by the people, which is a very long, and initially, a silent process.
Armed with the power to silence dissent, and to make lies heard as truth and
establish illogic as logic they also carry the capacity to erode their own
legitimacy. But in the process, adventurism and anarchism may find fertile
ground strengthening forces of reaction in absence of a lead by a class
conscious politics.
