THE GREEK DAVID AGAINST THE EUROPEAN GOLIATH! ΤΟ ΑΡΘΡΟ ΣΤΗΝ ΑΓΓΛΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΡΟΔΕΤΑΣ ΤΖΑΝΕΑ

     

by RodettaTzanea                                       

July 4, 2015

When the Greek economy started going downhill George Papandreou who was the prime minister at the time tried to strong-arm the European Union into backing down from enforcing painful reforms by announcing a referendum. Instead, this promptly led to his demise and his government was replaced by one that European leaders ‘approved of’ and that conveniently tied up Greece’s loose ends with...

Europe by enforcing strict austerity measures which Greeks gratefully accepted in order to be saved. They had, after all, gotten themselves into this big financial mess and needed the European Union to get them out. The result was for Greece to spiral deeper into recession and Greek citizens to spiral deeper into submission. The new   government that was elected with the New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras as Prime Minister also buckled under the pressure and accepted painful reforms - some necessary for the economy and some simply enforced by Greece’s creditors so that the numbers would add up. Greece needed to be saved financially at any cost. Europe had come to the rescue. People silently bowed their heads even further. Life became harder but everyone persevered in hopes of better days to come. 

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras came to power by promising to reinstate Greece’s dignity. By rising up as a modern-day David, he believed he could fight against the financial Goliath of Europe. He wielded numbers and reports that stated that the Greek debt needed restructuring. But time and money were running out for Greece, leaving Tsipras to play his last hand by issuing a referendum in which the Greek people have been called upon to vote on whether they want the deal the European Institutions and the IMF are offering them. They, in turn, have retorted that the real question of the referendum is whether Greeks want to stay in the Eurozone or not.

But the referendum is more than a decision on whether Greeks want a deal that will save their economy. It is no longer a question of whether Greeks want to live dishonorably. With Greece on its knees, and unlike the myth where David won out over Goliath, the real deal that is at stake here is Greece’s survival. Greece is fighting for its life…