ANAYSIS - Reforming the Greek Political System - PART One
The collapse of Greece following the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2010 has become irreversible. Contrary to claims by her bankrupt government, the political system that emerged after the collapse of the military junta in 1974 is now in an advanced state of decay. Greek politics has become an outright travesty. The state apparatus, always corrupt as well as dysfunctional, has now come to a practical halt. Social suffering is reaching new highs
Political solutions are non-existent. An incongruous game of musical chairs recycles the same political personnel who have exploited Greece for their own gain and have allied themselves with criminal minorities to promote their domination.
At any other period in history, Greece would be considered a prime candidate for a violent revolution. But despite four years of genocidal intervention by the EU and its German masters, the Greek people continue to show no signs of wishing to overturn a regime centered on rampant exploitation, deliberate reduction of social rights, economic destruction, and the gradual physical elimination of the weaker.
This reluctance to act in self defense baffles, to say the least. But explanations aren't hard to find. In this politically "postmodern" era, social confusion, trends proclaiming individual "self-expression" at the expense of social totalities, social "liberation" movements seeking to impose new morals on "outdated" social practices and norms, and the ever-present major force of consumption as the avenue to self-fulfillment have impacted Greek society keenly.
The post-1974 dominant political force, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), and its founder, Andreas Papandreou, worked tirelessly to exploit all these often conflicting ideas to establish a quasi "constitutional" dictatorship putting the emphasis on strengthening the Party as the all-embracing power above social and political institutions.
The experiment, involving the effective dissolution of traditional political bonds, the promotion of Party superiority, the acceptance of corruption as the vehicle to "growth," and the establishment of a political class of brutish, buffoonish and uneducated cadres as the "vanguard" of Papandreou's movement reaching for the "Third Road to Socialism."
The net result of these processes was an unprecedented unhinging of state and country.
To paraphrase Lenin for a moment, PASOK's rule, bearing strong resemblances to Third World communist regimes, succeeded in pleasing the masses through fake "empowerment" while all the while subjecting them to a not-too-soft suppression of any opposition by a handful of "socialist capitalists."
PASOK's rule had other ramifications as well.
To name just a few: one of Papandreou's primary objectives was to subjugate mass media to Party whims; within years, Greece was blanketed by methodical propaganda and promotion of behaviors sanctioned by PASOK's "limitless democracy." To achieve the desired results, PASOK did not hesitate to marry the press and electronic media to PASOK-approved money oligarchs.
While PASOK evangelized "genuine freedom and equality," it worked to control the numbers of those who were to benefit from such lofty-sounding ideals; entry into the PASOK "paradise" was reserved for groups that became dependent on Party-induced corruption.
PASOK's battle cry of "Allagi" (viz. Change) had the practical application of quickly wrecking "conservative" laws, structures and institutions and replacing them with "progressive" ones which, opaquely, established Party intervention as the accepted measure of "democracy;" the net outcome was a progressive state of chaos in many sectors of national life and especially in education, the economy, and relations between the State and citizens.
ANAYSIS - Reforming the Greek Political System - PART Two
PASOK's political supremacy lasted for more that twenty years (1981-2004), with only a brief conservative government interlude in 1990-93.
During this period, PASOK built the firm foundation of the "system PASOK" that was to produce the gravest crisis in modern Greek history, beginning in 2007.
The "system PASOK" stood on two main political pillars: precedence of the Party, in both overt and covert ways, over all state institutions; and, a complex "grass roots" organization aimed at attracting and retaining voters through nepotism, patronage, direct "gifts" to the "underprivileged," the distribution of public sector "jobs" requiring little or no labor on the part of the beneficiary, and, often, the award of phantom pensions to legions of the non-eligible.
In total, the "system PASOK" energized the worst instincts of the majority of the Greek population; established a sub-culture of disobedience, deceit, lawlessness, political malaise, and arbitrariness; corrupted generations of public administrators; and introduced and promoted the idea that Greece could continue with the "good years" thanks to outside largesse in the form of loans and European support funds.
Conservative political forces proved themselves unable to effectively counter the PASOK maelstrom.
The main conservative party of New Democracy (ND), led by Constantine Karamanlis, the elder, struggled in the political wilderness, unable to challenge PASOK either ideologically or "on the ground."Only after Andreas Papandreou's death in 1996 and the rise to power of "modernizer" Costas Simitis did PASOK start to waver.
Under Simitis, Greece entered the Eurozone in 2001 after a thorough cooking of the numbers.
Ditching the old drachma and adopting a grossly overvalued "common" currency was disastrous for the Greek economy. While consumer prices quickly shot through the roof, and Greek assets were devalued in order to oil the entry into the euro, Greek exports quickly dropped as prices of Greek goods rose beyond what exports markets were willing to pay.
Simitis's claims that Greece was at last "armored" against dangerous economic fluctuations proved themselves untrue.
By 2007, and after PASOK had lost to ND in 2004, it was obvious (but never openly admitted) that Greece was firmly on the way to a catastrophic economic meltdown.
What was the reaction of Greece's politicians to this evolving crisis with almost preordained disaster as the end result?
To put it in as few words as possible, the reaction was essentially sticking one's head in the sand.
ND, now in government, adopted (and/or was forced to) the Simitis approach of unconditional surrender to the euro, and its attendant disparities and damages.
Costas Karamanlis, the younger (nephew of K. Karamanlis, the elder, who died in 1998), who was now prime minister, refused to move toward even mild "rationalizing" measures to arrest the slide (unfortunately George Papandreou was more than willing).
When ND lost again to PASOK in 2010, it was already too late to do anything effective concerning Greece's gargantuan sovereign debt.
(And all this... thanks to a party that claimed it served the people! PASOK which only has a small fraction of seats in government is still in power today and it is more than certain that the Simitis clan -yes the same crooks that made corruption an art- is still conducting business as usual. We can see this through its prized ministers such as M.Chrysohoidis, who was untouched by the recent government reshuffle, or by the appointment of Andreas Loverdos -who is another wannabe that is the voice of the corrupted past- and we can certainly view this continuassly through Evangelos Venizelos who we all know is the eyes and the ears of Brussels and the voice of Costas Simitis himself. )
Sources:
http://www.thymosophos.com/2014/05/reforming-greek-political-system-one.html
http://www.thymosophos.com/2014/05/reforming-greek-political-system-two_31.html
Posts
