LETTER FROM GREECE:The horrendous debt of every man, woman and child has brought hostility and resistance on to the streets
SAMUEL JOHNSON said fear of death “concentrates the mind wonderfully”. So too does fear of bankruptcy. In fact, it takes a complete financial collapse such as the current Greek crisis to bring home to ordinary folks the destitution of their society.
A cultural malaise, a political scandal, may or may not register on the Richter scale of civil unrest, but the horrendous debt of every man, woman and child, and the escalating cost of everyday living, push us right off the scale. They bring open resistance and hostility onto the streets as a sign that the contract between citizens and authority has broken down.
Many Greeks are asking whether that breakage is reparable.
The arrest of six suspected members of the terrorist group Revolutionary Struggle provoked some public confidence in the security forces. But it also provoked a street protest by supporters of the terrorists. Their trial, if it ever takes place, might cause not only further acts of terrorism but also street demonstrations in favour of this particular group (one of many). Such terrorism might be seen as a mark of the growing distrust between ordinary citizens and the state to which they – in theory – owe allegiance but which, in practice, they reject in many respects. The links between society, culture and violence are deep and potentially explosive.
Prime minister George Papandreou pulled off a diplomatic coup in the persuasive way in which he presented the case for the EU bailout, which has won him respect among the politicians, bankers and the rank-and-file, and he has probably sent a sufficiently strong warning to the offshore sharks that the economies of smaller nations cannot be picked off so easily. But he has set his sights so high for a turnaround in Greek society and its administration, especially in the areas of taxation and corruption, that any backsliding could equally earn him these groups’ disavowal and contempt.
The hardest hit by rising prices are, predictably, older people in rural areas, even though they are self-sufficient in many basics such as olive oil, wine, eggs and vegetables. But in a society where a university professor earns only slightly more than a baggage-handler and only slightly less than an ambassador, everyone’s disposable income is vulnerable, and this makes people very, very angry.
The country is in hock – and that means not only the financial future but also the future of Greek self-respect and self-confidence, which will be extremely difficult to re-establish, especially when pride in “Greekness” is so deeply ingrained that it is difficult to articulate it. What does it mean to be Greek in a state only 180 years old, and dominated from the beginning by greater powers? It’s a hard question to contemplate, let alone to answer. And Greeks are not satisfied with the idea that instead of talking of “Greekness” they should concentrate on being European. The Balkan temperament cannot be governed from Bonn, Paris or Brussels.
Greeks are not angry with Papandreou or with the previous government; they are learning to be angry with themselves, with the fact that the contract between citizens and authority works both ways. They cannot yet find a way of deciding how, in fact, it works.
There is a painful memory of the military junta of 1967-1974, especially among the university students of that time. And there is a residual memory – equally painful – among much older Greeks (and their children) of the civil war in the 1940s.
The memory of physical force backed up by penal legislation suggests that it could happen again, if civil breakdown manifests itself in any stronger terms. Whether there is sufficient ideological line management from today’s colonels to send in the tanks is one side of the question; how to control mass disobedience in the cities, and mass dismay and disaffection in the villages, is another.
Whether a junta would be possible in an EU member state is as debatable as Greece leaving the sanctity of the euro zone, but everything is up for debate. This is a country on the edge, at the limits, of its capacity to cope with the tensions and pressures of EU membership.
Fine Gael TD Michael Ring was recently quoted as saying “Everyone in this country is frightened.” If he is right, Greeks and Irish have everything in common. George Papandreou’s diplomacy (he is both prime minister and foreign minister) is holding the country together, but next month he is faced with a Greek-Turkish summit which will bring those tensions to the surface, because Greece’s real attitude to Turkey’s bid for EU membership, with such huge repercussions for the EU, will depend on his negotiations with Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
All the deepest Greek fears and aspirations – such as the continuing Cypriot crisis, the identity of Greeks on the easternmost islands (those closest to Turkey and ruled by it until 1913), and the issue of mineral assets in territorial waters – will merge with the question-mark over Greece’s capacity for economic and social survival and cohesion. Quite an agenda, that.