As the New Year begins with “flares” and “fireworks” looming over the dark sky of the country’s public life, people can sit back and observe the developments. After all, it is true from the ancient times that you must have a well -balanced equilibrium between “bread” and “entertainment”. Given that bread is now scarce, the show will start to become more and more spectacular.
The relatives of the former Minister of Finance George Papaconstantinou are summoned by prosecutors for financial crimes while at the same time the procedure for the establishment of a preliminary inquisition committee is underway at the Parliament. The hard linewhich the leftist opposition party of SYRIZA has decided to follow by placing also in the “frame” President of PASOK and former Minister of Finance Evangelos Venizelos, has brought ever closer the three coalition parties, New Democracy, PASOK and Democratic Left in tackling together the rhetoric of SYRIZA.
To avoid being misunderstood I rush to clarify that I do not mean to say that this case and others which appear in the same way should not be investigated. I do wish to note however that while the recurring confrontation will provide many quotes for evening news broadcasts, we will be moving further and further away from the very essence of the problem we are faced with.
The problem is called “development”. Maturities are “running” with 1 billion per month. Children are getting cold in apartments with no heating. People next door are lining up for food from public aid to sustain themselves. Homeless Greeks have multiplied exponentially. Padlocks and bankruptcies have taken the form of a snowball. The tranches of foreign financial aid are proving to be the slow death of the economy and the society. The government may be celebrating, but in fact it resembles a “junkie” who is full of joy because he secured yet another fix.
The false hopes of reversing the recessionary climate are crushed by everyday experience. Development is not candy falling from the sky. It requires certain conditions and tools to support it. No such conditions and tools are currently available, and the government is trying to exploit the “fireworks” and “flares” of cases like Papakonstantinou, Papantoniou (former PASOK government Minister of Defence allegedly involved in armaments programs scandals),Carouzos and Lavrentiadis (businessmen recently prosecuted by the financial authorities) to keep the public eye away from what it intends to do. That is to give the final blow to the half-dead economy by passing the new taxation legislation.
Samaras (PM), Venizelos and Kouvelis (President of Democratic Left) who form the coalition government have every reason to talk about “fireworks” and “flares” while at the same time they are preparing another tax raid which will deepen the country’s economic and social disaster. However, all the “flares” in the world cannot hide the truth. There can be no development without freedom. And there can be no freedom when the state seeks to become a partner in the creation of real or even unreal income.
This simple and basic truth, upon which the democracies of the Western world are formed, is brutally defied in Greece where the recipe “more taxes” is horizontally dominant across the political system. It is the same political system which tries to cover its weakness and inability to invent something different than constant tax raids by staging this savage cannibalism.
The solution is not more taxation or to throw people in prisons. The solution is the Free Greeks who can think freely, create freely, and produce freely. “Freedom or death” applies primarily to the economy.
PS: Conceptually, liberals are proponents of liberty. SYRIZA, PASOK and the Democratic Left boldly declare their aversion to freedom through their ideological devotion to the almighty “partner”-state. Now, do you believe that Samaras and New Democracy are proponents of liberty? The question is rhetorical. Liberalism is not currently represented in Greece.
