Greece: ‘Referendum vs Pacman”

It was presented like a high level treason. A referendum – aka the imposition of the public will – versus Eurozone’s stability.

Greece was blackmailing Europe threatening to trigger the domino which could wash away the World’s economy despite that Greece represents about 2% of Europe’s GDP. This is a byproduct of globalization they say and it is really awkward that after reaching a compromise with a haircut of 50% suddenly the Greek PM asked for a referendum to legitimatize the process.

When he signed the first agreements with both the IMF and EU he didn’t feel that way, as he did it without a single vote from the Parliament. Only by the signature of the Minister of Economics Mr. Papakonstantinou… As Papandreou once said that “...there is money” during his pre-election campaign he also stated that with 153 members in the Parliament “I am going to step down”. But with every subsequent vote on the austerity measures he kept loosing some of his members as he scored out every opposite voice from his party. Lastly he has left with 152. Why then asking for a referendum when he has already refused the same authorization of the Parliament as prerequisite to sign such important agreements as well as refused to accept any different opinion is his own party?

Was him to blackmail Europe or the Greek Parliament?

Stating that the whole issue was triggered by the opposition’s unwillingness to accept the agreements, today he claimed that since the ND president Samaras accepted to vote in favor of the last agreement there is no need for referendum anymore.

I will leave aside the answer of the question that equalizes an organic element of democracy – though the referendums in the democratic EU are not favorable anyway – with an economic contract which involves a debt that some people must pay back without having any properor slight information on their near or far future.

In fact, what he did was to create an unnecessary crisis between Greece and Europe, pushing the opposition ND to cooperate by underlying that the Greek “wise” voters – that they have no idea about the factual structure of the ongoing agreements as they hadn't about the falsification of the state's logistic books in the past – could sink the country in to chaos. This was a good way to get rid of the Greek voter leaving the whole situation in the hands of a Parliament that was formed by the ignorance of the coming bankruptcy. Praising afterwords the (ND) Samaras for his decision on cooperation first he simply generated a such hostile situation between Greece and the EU, forcing the opposition to submit under the risk that it could become an international pariah from now on choosing to stay on the opposite side. For a possible meltdown of the euro it would be the Greek opposition to be blamed. The plausible ongoing is a collective vote on the last agreement within a formation of a transitional government that will decide unelected on the most crucial matters.

Even the debtor have rights. And the most important is to know everything about what he is signing. But most of the Greek people don’t. It is rather that the Pacman of the rather failed economic union ate his aspirin and once more will shallow up the little ghosts of the democratic conscience. If a referendum endangers the stability of a union, if a democratic procedure endangers the status of such a great entity as a European Union, the real problems are in the structure and will prbably surface again harsher in the future.