Many Greeks feel their country is already broken
Jonathan Rugman blogs from Athens, where a two-day strike against austerity measures needed to secure an EU/IMF bailout is beginning. One man tells him the crisis has been a “plague” for Greece.
In the backstreets of Athens it is an increasingly common sight to see Greeks scavenging for anything of value inside large refuse bins which stink in the summer heat.
In one of the city’s soup kitchens, where they serve 3,500 portions of food a day, the demand for a free square meal has risen in the last 6 months by 25 percent.
The kitchen is run by the municipal council and funding for it has gone up, despite budget cuts in almost every other area of council activity. In the garden, poor Athenians sit on wooden benches, eating off plastic plates under the trees, occasionally distracted by the foraging for food by local birds.
This place is an oasis of calm in the midst of economic meltdown, though demand for its services is so high that it is guarded by municipal police, and we are warned not to film the faces of those queuing to be fed here; that, we are told, would publicise their shame, and could provoke such fury that our camera might be attacked.
The council also runs a free supermarket, funded by the Carrefour chain, where 200 of the poorest families are allowed to shop, though the waiting list is ten times that number.
“This crisis has been a plague for Greece,” the centre’s director tells me.
Despite today’s 48 hour general strike, he says the soup kitchen and shop are staying open, though the director himself will be joining the thousands expected to besiege parliament in protest.
“People in politics know nothing about poverty,” he explains, predicting demand for his services will soar in the coming months.
This week’s vote on the latest round of austerity measures has been described as a “make or break” moment for Greece, but my sense is that many Greeks in Athens look around themselves and think their country is already broken.
They do not share the same sense of urgency felt in other European capitals and capital markets. Or rather their urgency is very different. What others are demanding they give in tax rises and spending cuts, they are fighting to protect. Why give foreign creditors what they want when nothing Greeks can do can really plug the financial hole of Greece’s 355 billion euro debt?
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The parliamentary vote is set for lunchtime on Wednesday. MPs are being asked to back 28 billion euros of tax hikes and spending cuts and privatisations set to raise a further 50 billion euros. Up to 150 000 jobs could go, taking Greece’s official unemployment rate of over 16 per cent far higher than that.
Like last week’s vote of confidence in the Government, the vote is expected to be close because the Government holds a majority of just five. Yet without a “yes” vote, the IMF and EU won’t release 12 billion euros designed to stop Greece defaulting on imminent debt repayments.
The opposition will vote against on the grounds that they can’t support a policy which deepens Greece’s recession. The Prime Minister’s claim last night that the cuts are the “only way” to get Greece back on its feet falls on many deaf ears here. Nothing Greeks are hearing suggests there is any light at the end of the tunnel any time soon. Fifty billion euros of privatisation – that’s one state entity privatised every 15 days – is bound to lead to job losses in the short term.
And even if the vote passes inside parliament, it won’t be without a fight outside. Everybody is predicting trouble. The sense I have is that many Greeks are past caring about what they as a nation owe as the price has become too high.
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If what they are being told to contribute through their own economic sacrifice will never be enough to erase the vast national debt, then why contribute beyond what austerity measures have been agreed already?
When I was here when this crisis began over a year ago, I felt a sense of national shame at the state the country had got itself into.
I could see a version of that shame on the faces of the destitute in the soup kitchen yesterday. But for many Greeks, shame has been replaced by a growing sense that the acceptable limit of sacrifice has been reached, and that this is not their problem to solve.
Follow Jonathan Rugman on Twitter: @jrug