ATHENS – With international lenders continuing to withhold aid until the Greek Parliament ratifies austerity measures agreed on by the country’s shaky coalition government, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the country now has to decide whether it wants to stay in the Eurozone of the 17 countries using the euro as a currency or return to the drachma, which means giving up ongoing loans, a second bailout of $169 billion, and certain default. The money is being put up by the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank Troika (EU-IMF-ECB) which pressed Greece to go after private sector workers after slashing public workers pay.
“Nobody can hide behind anyone else,” said Venizelos. “Nobody can keep pretending to be the good guy. Our choice will be between sacrifices and even bigger sacrifices,” he added. Venizelos, a PASOK Socialist who has imposed waves of tax hikes on Greek workers and was one of the architects of the latest deal to cut into private sector wages, raised the stakes and the heat on the coalition’s other partners, the New Democracy conservatives and far Right-Wing LAOS party who continued to have reservations about the deal they supported, and as the Parliament is set to debate on Feb. 12, Greek workers took to the streets on Feb. 10 to begin a two-day strike said they would keep protesting outside the Parliament.
Interim Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, a former ECB Vice-President, is putting the proposal to lawmakers and has 268 of the 300 seats in his coalition, but some are balking, especially at reducing the minimum wage by 22 percent, and 32 percent for those under 25. Labor unions are rallying forces and a government deputy minister resigned after complaining the Troika was dictating the country’s future and demanding unconstitutional reforms. The Troika said Greece is paying the price for generations of packing public payrolls with political hires in return for votes and its $460 billion debt and 10 percent deficit are not sustainable. Some 15,000 workers would be let go this year and another 135,000 by the end of 2015 if Greece wants to keep getting the aid lifeline.
If Greece does not implement the reforms it has agreed upon and a 70 percent write-down in debt negotiated with creditors in a so-called Private Sector Involvement (PSI,) said Venizelos, it would have to leave the Eurozone. Greece needs the continuing loans to pay workers and pensioners and also meet a March 20 loan payment of $18.8 billion.
Speaking in Brussels following the end of the Eurogroup meeting, Venizelos said that Greek politicians had a “historic responsibility” to live up to over the next few days, and had to decide by Feb. 15, when the Eurozone finance ministers will meet again, whether to support or reject the agreement. “Our country, our people should think and make a final strategic choice,” he said. “If we see the future of our country within the Eurozone, within Europe, we should do what we have to do for the program to be approved and for the PSI to be concluded on time before major bonds expire in March.”
“The era of easy choices and demagoguery is over,” he said, in what the newspaper Kathimerini characterized as a thinly-veiled attack on New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, who made a televised address saying Greece needs growth, not more of the cuts he supported. He also said he wants elections quickly. The Eurozone finance ministers said they want Greece to show how it plans to cut $430.4 million in other areas so that pensions would not have to be cut, which means health care and defense spending are likely targets to be chopped. They also want written commitments from coalition leaders to stick to the agreements even after general elections, with Samaras and LAOS leader George Karatzaferis saying they would refuse to do so.
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