Another crucial meeting between Greek officials and lenders over the Greek debt ended in a fiasco followed by vague statements such as “we are on the final stretch” or “we will meet again in the next few days.”
The impasse in negotiations gives several cabinet members the opportunity to utter more brave, defiant statements like “we won’t sign a deal that will be against the people” or “we say no to blackmail” and so on.
All this uncertainty and ambiguity — creative or otherwise — has also given several of them the chance to fantasize, to create wonderful scenarios of an independent Greece, cut off from Europe’s tyrannical anchor, sailing into beautiful seas where socialism rules, states have unlimited funds to distribute to the people, there is no hunger, justice and equality prevail, all citizens retire at 45, the health system is impeccable, and every student can enter a university and stay there as long as they want.
The alternatives proposed by ministers, deputies and other officials are equivalent to the wishes of some people who are certain that at some point soon they will win the lottery and live happily ever after.
A great example came last week when a deputy minister said on the radio that negotiations are like the mythical sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis, where the one is an austerity deal and the other is bankruptcy. The deputy is certain that Greece is the cunning Odysseus and will pass between Scylla and Charybdis unscathed. When asked what the alternatives are, he said there are several alternatives but he couldn’t name one.
So did another minister who keeps screaming that Greece should leave NATO, the European Union and go it alone. The alternatives he offered were imaginary energy deals with Russia — something the Russian authorities have denied — and funding from the BRICS bank. When it came to the steep membership fee, he answered that we can pay that in installments. The same minister also visited the embassy of rich Venezuela to secure more alliances. When asked to specify what the alternatives are he pressed “play” and mouthed all the Marxist clichés we are used to in the last four months. Without, of course, naming an actual alternative.
It seems that the fact that the continuing standoff “costs” Greece 59 small businesses and 619 jobs lost every day is insignificant to many government officials because they can easily blame it on the memorandum, the austerity, the previous government, evil capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, fascism, the Illuminati and Europe’s intransigence. Also, they don’t care about numbers, like those bad lenders do, but only about people. When the Athens stock exchange plunges, they don’t care because it is an instrument of satanic capitalism.
Now the same people talk about elections. Elections in Greece are easy and fun: You tell people what they want to hear and you don’t have to do anything. It’s easy to talk about your utopias and you are certain that desperate Greeks will follow you in your political fantasies. They will put you in power and pay you a fat salary. With the same ease that they flocked to buy lottery tickets last Sunday. Chasing their one in sixteen million chance.
Alexis Tsipras, on the other hand, speaks of a realistic solution that would be mutually beneficial. All the visits in Brussels, the handshaking and talks with top European officials and other important figures have put him more in tune with the real world of international politics and finance. He is beginning to understand how “real” countries and administrations operate. He is beginning to learn how important the economy of a country is. Whereas most of his comrades see the economy as a bad capitalist notion.
Now he has the difficult task to teach some of his cabinet members and MPs how the real world works.
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