******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
NY Times, Mar. 23 2015
In Greece, Syriza Struggles to Deliver Promises as Money Runs Out
By JIM YARDLEY
ATHENS — Glowering with disdain, Evangelos Venizelos stepped into the
well of the Greek Parliament and ridiculed members of the country’s new
leftist government. They had vowed to roll back unpopular austerity
measures that Mr. Venizelos and the prior government had pushed through.
They had promised that Greece would stop kneeling to European creditors.
Mr. Venizelos, once a powerful minister given the task of defending
austerity, offered a disgusted opinion: Who are you kidding?
“You were grossly unprepared and naïve,” Mr. Venizelos boomed during
last Friday’s debate over a government amnesty program to collect unpaid
taxes. He added: “The government is fooling itself by using double talk.
They are saying one thing in the country and another thing to the lenders.”
Having promised an anti-austerity revolution, Prime Minister Alexis
Tsipras and his Syriza party are now having a taste of comeuppance. Even
as Syriza leaders say their program remains on track, the party is
struggling to transition from rebel outsiders plotting to wrest Greek’s
economic sovereignty back from Berlin and Brussels to running a
government that is rapidly running out of money.
Infighting is worsening as hard-core leftist factions grow frustrated by
some of the compromises made by Mr. Tsipras in his continuing
negotiations with creditors. Critics on the left and right are
questioning whether the government has a viable plan to restart economic
growth. And still unresolved is whether the government can strike a deal
with Europe to keep the country afloat, an issue that will be front and
center on Monday, when Mr. Tsipras meets in Berlin with Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany.
Greece’s finances have deteriorated as postelection anxiety over
uncertainty about the bailout spurred a spike in bank withdrawals. Tax
collections also plunged, raising questions about whether the government
would be able to pay state workers and meet other obligations.
On Feb. 20, Greek leaders signed a four-month bailout extension with its
three main creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European
Central Bank and the European Commission. Yet creditors have refused to
release a critical 7.2-billion-euro, or about $7.8 billion, loan payment
(money that Syriza had once vowed not to accept but that is now badly
needed) until the government provides a list of acceptable structural
reforms to replace pension cuts and other austerity measures that had
been under consideration by the previous government.
Having held office for only two months, Mr. Tsipras’s government might
seem to be facing grossly unrealistic expectations, yet they are largely
self-imposed. During the campaign, Mr. Tsipras told buoyant crowds that
Syriza would repeal punitive austerity laws — practically on Day 1 —
rehire fired public workers, stop privatizations of state-owned assets,
force creditors to write down the national debt and tackle the corrupt
oligarchical business elites that dominate the economy.
As yet, none of that has happened, and the contentious talks with
European creditors have created a sense of parallel realities, as Mr.
Tsipras and his outspoken finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, continue
to declare that Greece, not the lenders, are winning the standoff, even
as they have already retreated from some campaign promises.
On the streets of Athens, Syriza remains popular even as many people say
they are waiting for action. Antigovernment protests had mostly
dissipated in the weeks after Syriza’s election. Yet on Friday, a youth
wing of the Communist Party staged a demonstration outside a Finance
Ministry building as it revived demands for the reinstatement of slashed
university funds.
Syriza leaders reject any suggestion that European creditors are forcing
them to walk the same line as their predecessors. Syriza had denounced
the past government, a coalition led by the center-right New Democracy
party, for allowing bureaucrats from creditor institutions to wield veto
power on legislation.
“These bills will be written here, because we will not continue the
practice of having technocrats writing our bills,” Mr. Tsipras said last
week as the government introduced its first major piece of legislation,
named the humanitarian bill, to provide relief to the poor.
Even as some European leaders have criticized Mr. Tsipras and Mr.
Varoufakis for their confrontational approach to debt negotiations — and
have accused them of stoking nationalist anger — the Greek public seems
undisturbed. A new poll by Metron Analysis, sampling 1,000 people across
the country, found that 41.9 percent of respondents would vote for
Syriza if a new election were held, more than double the share of the
New Democracy party.
Yet if still popular, Syriza is not united. Over all, Greeks appear
overwhelmingly to want to remain in the eurozone. Yet analysts and past
polls suggest that Syriza partisans are much more divided, a split that
reflects other tensions. One far-left faction, led by Panagiotis
Lafazanis, a government minister, is already pushing back against
compromises that Mr. Tsipras has made to creditors on privatizing state
assets.
“Lafazanis has vowed to stop any privatizations that fall under his
jurisdiction,” said Vasiliki Siouti, a liberal political commentator who
has written extensively about Syriza. She said some leftists had also
questioned why the party had not yet moved to investigate and to tax
business oligarchs long suspected of corruption. Others are frustrated
that the government hasn’t yet repealed the existing terms of the
bailout, known as the memorandum.
“They basically have accepted the memorandum,” Ms. Siouti added. “They
have not annulled it.”
Some Syriza lawmakers have bluntly warned that the government has done
too little to prepare for the possibility of a crisis — even a potential
exit from the euro. Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza lawmaker who in the past
has supported leaving the euro, recently warned that an informed public
debate over a Greek exit from the single currency is needed because
party leaders know they cannot reconcile their political program with
the demands of creditors.
“These two things are incompatible,” Mr. Lapavitsas told The Press
Project, an English-language news website in Greece.
Greek news media are reporting that when Mr. Tsipras meets with Ms.
Merkel on Monday, he will push for a compromise on privatizations.
In Athens, the government will continue rolling out its initial
legislative program, after a delayed start. The humanitarian law
provides subsidies on food, electricity, rent and public transportation
to the desperately poor — fulfilling a campaign promise, even if the
financial support is narrower than originally expected.
Friday’s debate was over legislation to provide an installment plan that
would allow citizens or companies to repay overdue taxes while waiving
penalties. Greek taxpayers owe the government €78 billion in arrears,
and Syriza lawmakers expect the legislation to provide an influx of cash
to state coffers as well as relief to citizens who had been facing legal
action.
Yet in Parliament, opposition lawmakers seized on the title of the
legislation — “Rebooting the Economy” — as an opportunity to pillory the
government for lacking a real growth plan.
Adonis Georgiadis, a minister in the former government, said Syriza
would eventually be forced to pass new austerity measures to appease
creditors, or face a catastrophe if the loan money was shut off.
“You cannot admit that you are signing a new memorandum,” he said
mockingly. “We want to welcome you to the memorandum.”
The new government is facing other challenges. On Sunday, a Greek
newspaper reported that George Katrougalos, the deputy minister for
administrative reform, had used his government position to help former
law clients, an assertion that he and Syriza flatly denied.
Not far from Parliament, Evangelia Alexaki was also watching her new
government with high expectations. She is a leader of a group of
cleaning ladies who became national symbols of the harshness of
austerity when they were fired from their jobs in the Finance Ministry.
They have been sleeping in tents outside the ministry for months,
demanding to be reinstated, and Syriza has pledged to introduce
legislation soon to rehire them and other fired workers.
“If the government does not deliver,” she said, “they will find us
against them.”
Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting from Athens.
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com