A
fter three years of implementing the
Memorandum, even its conceivers have
been convinced that it was a mistake.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t seem to persuade its
local implementers, who are, apparently, more
royal than the king. Mr. Samaras did not confine
himself to approving this mistake. He has been
supporting it with the zeal of a neophyte and has
been implementing it in a high-handed manner.
He is legislating by means of legislative decrees.
He is arresting, torturing, drafting people.
Government repression and Memorandum-based
violence: these are the two pillars of the govern-
ment’s policy; the two-headed monster of the
Samaras coalition government.
The Memorandum has failed in its stated objec-
tives. Recessionary austerity has already ren-
dered the public debt, as a percentage of GDP,
not only unsustainable, but completely beyond
any control. It has dragged the country’s interna-
tional competitiveness, along with salaries, unit
labour costs and workers’ rights, to the bottom:
from the 83rd place in the global ranking of the
World Economic Forum for 2010, to the 96th
place, among 144 countries, in 2012.
At the same time, the Memorandum is creating con-
ditions of humanitarian crisis. Unemployment has
entrapped almost one third of the labour force, and
marches on unchecked. In 2011, 23% of the popu-
lation lived in poverty. Instead of being increased, in
order to help reverse the recession and help the
economy recover, public investment is being cur-
tailed in an effort to catch fiscal targets. As noted in
the annual report of the Institute of Labour (INE) of
the Greek General Confederation of Labour
(GSEE) on Greek economy and employment in
2012: “In this sense, it is worth noting that, as far as
the Greek economy’s exit from the crisis is con-
cerned, the choice is not between austerity or
default, which embroils our country in a vicious spi-
ral of long-term impasses. On the contrary, the
choice is between recession or growth, through the
implementation of effective economic, redistributive
and social measures, in order to disentangle
Greece’s economic and social fabric from the pro-
longation of the impasse and the recession”.
Trade with Greece
8
It is now self-evident: the supposed
solution to the crisis is the crisis
itself: not only fiscal, but also
humanitarian.
Greece is caught in the
deadly maelstrom of the
Memorandum
By Alexis Tsipras,
President of the Coalition of the Radical Left
and the Coalition of Left Movements and Ecology
