Big fat Greek strike: MPs and govt say no escaping austerity

Published time: November 05, 2012 13:33
Edited time: November 05, 2012 19:56
Journalists attend a demonstration as part of a 24-hour media blackout of print, broadcast and electronic media journalists in central Athens on November 5, 2012. (AFP Photo/Luoisa Gouliamaki)
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Debt-ridden Greece enters yet another week of anti-austerity protests. The country risks coming to a standstill as the parliament votes on a fresh austerity package of cost cuts and tax hikes for a new cash injection from its international creditors.

A 24-hour strike starting Monday is expected to unite hospital doctors, journalists, Metro, taxi and train drivers and other transport workers, reports RT's Peter Oliver from Athens.

Working unions of Greece are starting a general strike on Tuesday and are expected to continue it through Wednesday and even to the weekend, when the parliament is expected to vote for the 2013 budget.

The peak of the protests is expected on Wednesday, when the largest rally against austerity will be held in the center of the capital Athens while the national air traffic control will join the strike and Greek airspace will be closed for commercial flights for three hours. Ferry services will also be severely disrupted.

Doctors will strike for three days from Monday that will leave hospitals functioning on emergency staff. There will be no news broadcasts and newspapers will not be published on Tuesday. Schools and public administration offices will also shut down.

Protesters want the authorities pay attention to the fact that living conditions in Greece have been going down for three consecutive years. The unions expect the disruption of public services and transport might influence the austerity plans of the government.

The opposition says the fact that the government so easily accepts all austerity measures insisted on by the creditors should make people rise up and take back their country, with a new election to follow.

AFP Photo/Luoisa Gouliamaki
AFP Photo/Luoisa Gouliamaki

The ruling coalition insists that without the money Greece would go bankrupt before the end of November and prepares to ratify all proposed austerity measures. The ruling coalition expects to save at least 13.5 billion euro (US$17.3 billion) in 2013-2014 thanks to new austerity measures.

Greece has been using loans from international financial institutions to stay afloat starting from May 2010.

The Greek lawmakers must adopt new austerity measures as soon as possible to get another 31.5 billion euro from the second financial help package of 130 billion euro divided into tranches. Without that money Greece would be cashless by November 16.

Greece’s PM Antonis Samaras believes Greece’s financial well-being depends on whether the parliament will pass the new cuts. He said that once the cuts approved and the 2013 budget adopted, all the talk about Greece leaving the eurozone will be over.

If the 2013 does not pass the parliament, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras warned that Greece would face bankruptcy and unprecedented upheaval, because “alternative does not exist”.

In the meantime, the number of parliamentarians supporting austerity continues to diminish, as MPs come under great pressure from the voters. From the 300-seat Greek parliament, the ruling coalition must have at least 151 voices to make its laws pass. As of now the ruling coalition has only a minimal majority of six voices.

A man walks near the Greek parliament on November 5, 2012, as a banner call for a 48-hours general strike next November 6-7.  (AFP Photo/Luoisa Gouliamaki)
A man walks near the Greek parliament on November 5, 2012, as a banner call for a 48-hours general strike next November 6-7. (AFP Photo/Luoisa Gouliamaki)

Comments (31)

Danaos (unregistered) 06.11.2012 09:55

(.cont)

Today the current Greek government is led by Samaras in a coalition of PASOK socialist and even the relatively quite-leftish DHMAR party. To be noted, Samaras comes from an old Greek elit (mostly quite internationalised) and he had been the previous' PM Jeffrey Papandreou's roomate in post-graduate studies in the US.... so you get it...

For Greek people there is no way out. If it was just the financial problem that could be handled. Right now the biggest threat for Greek people is an unctrollable invasion of illegal immigrants massively of sunnite muslim background from Asia and Africa. This is a most perfect bomb and has been set in conjunction with the rise of the fake pseudonazi Golden Dawn party - a fabrication of the Greek (see USA) intelligence services (see better CIA...) under Papapandreou the father for filing purposes and for instigating political provocations : the perfect trap has been set for Greek people: Greeks are being looted, raped, killed, but Greeks are accused as Nazis against the ''poor destitute immigrants'' (they call them immigrants when they are aggressive looting invaders - 75% of them young male shunite muslims - what chances do local unprotected people have?).

Greek s realise that the best thing is to move out of the EU but also realise that right now is nto the best time to do so. The depth of the trap is such that they will have to suffer a war of attrition just like the one Serbians of Bosnia and of Kosovo suffered. With more than 2 million muslim illegal immigrants in a country of 10 million people, the analogy between Greek young men able to carry arms and the muslim young men able to carry arms is perhaps already in favour of muslims (i.e. of the US and Britain). This is the perfect trap. One wrong move by the Greeks and they are ''dead''. They are anyway dead if this process continues like that thus the rising number of Greeks that start seeing up to Russia as a way out of all that mess, not so much on the financial side of it (Greeks know their finances cannot get better in years/decades to come) but on the geopolitical and militarty side of it.

Remember:

The real issues in Greece are not financial.

It is the 12-miles issue (read....)
It is the access to Black Sea
It is the oil and gas pipelines
It is the oil and gas in the Aegean itself.

Issue s that the 99,999% of our ''friends'' Europeans (the citizens I mean) are not even aware....

+1

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Danaos (unregistered) 06.11.2012 09:35

(.cont from previous)

Dur ing the despeakable government of Papandreou 9 out of 10 current problems that plague Greece were created. The county enterred with a fully functioning economy, but in  a matter of 8 years, the vast majority of its production had been dismantled, the debt rose to 100% of GDP and the country became the perfect slave to EU commands.

In 1990 the Greek people voted for right wing ND party led by Mitsotakis in full knowledge Mitsotakis would raise taxes, keep down salaries and privitize the useless state companies that Papandreou had created - all this because people had got wary of the external debt that plagued Greece. However Mitsotakis did none of that seriously and increased the external debt. By mid-90s only Simitis promised a serious government and people given the choice handed it to him but Simitis (a man favoured by French and Germans) only did things worse, even enterring the country into the euro as Germans had demanded.

By 2004, Greeks brought up a right wing government, ND led by Karamanlis the nephew, again under the promise to re-found the state!. Strangely, a right-winger Karamanlis, broke away from USA and even Europe and turned his attention to Russia and China signing for gas deals and leasing of ports. And it is there that the current problem starts... somewhere around 2004-2005. Remember the negative press that Greece was receiving well since the Olympic preparations, the forest fires, the riots - all organised by the well-known centers to render the Karamanlis government unable to govern. Papandreou the son/grandson jumped out promising Greeks stability. And this is perhaps the first elections that Greeks really did the worst of the worst choices - they voted for the man who was dining with Goldman Sachs directors in his Athens home on the night of elections! Naturally, the crisis started just 3 days after elections and it all accumulated from there on. Papandreou refused Russia's and China's offers on the debt, refused even EU-only solutions and mingled both the ECB and the IMF to enforce financial terrorism upon the state.

(.cont )

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Danaos (unregistered) 06.11.2012 09:15

Guys, the issue is much much more complicated than you think - and even asking us Greeks, ourselves are not really fully aware.

Go back to the late-1973. Greece, enforced a second dictatorship by US/Britain since the first one (themselves had enforced!) did not fully comply to their orders, then Cyprus is invaded by Turkey (back then a much much less powerful country that Greece could beat in a day) telling Greece to retire its forces or face Armageddon (USSR also silently agreed) and thus NATO forces (US, Britain, Turkey) attacked NATO forced (Greece). It happened.

The regime in Greece fell (after having done what its masters told it) and Karamanlis returned to re-establish democracy and a referndum was made on the regime with more than 75% of people (both left and right wing) voting out the pseudoroyal family establishing a parliamentarian system. In 1977, following re-election without having said anything Karamanlis seeking geopolitical protection out of the vicious NATO, seeking also to avoid USSR  turned to a nascent EU-to-be EEC. 

Howeve r Greek people were anxious to get out of NATO and viewed EEC one and the same thus even right-wingers rushed to vote PASOK Papandreou party to form a socialist government in 1981 to do 4 major things:

1. get Greece out of NATO
2. get Greece out of EEC
3. resolve the Cyprus crisis
4. maintain the country neutral and independent

. .. little did they know that Papandreou was USA's man who not only would not do anything of the above but:

1. Increased NATO presence in greece
2. Kept Greece in EEC and followed ALL EEC directives dismantling the Greek economy and creating the 90% of the current debt!!!
3. Deteriorated Greeks' position in Cyprus
4. Further enslaved the country

(.con t).

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