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Greece: Time for Some Forgiveness

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By Professor Dimitri Gonis
A taxi ride through the Peloponnese is an eye opening experience. It’s about 300 kilometres and a three hour drive from Kalamata to Athens. The fee is 250 euros or about 380 dollars; more than half a month’s income for the average Greek. The views are breathtaking and the air is redolent of thyme and oregano. In the seventies and eighties the same trip could take up to seven hours by roads that meandered dangerously through precipitous ravines. There is no doubt that the European project has brought a great deal of progress to Greece. It’s most striking contribution is the road system with its tunnels, highways and freeways. Long, wide thoroughfares lined with daphne plants and ample blue signage that provides directions. With these also came the omnipresent toll-booths that welcome you to each prefecture. They are a reminder that nothing is for free.
Another feature of the Greek landscape is the endless concrete outlines of buildings abandoned half way through construction. Mile after mile, the silhouettes of pillars and slabs stand eerily against a solemn background. Abandoned tractors and olive groves, cars without number plates and people without smiles. Millions of dreams that have been put on hold for Greece’s European and international creditors.
The average Greek has paid for his ‘European membership’ dearly. It’s obvious on the faces and in the stoops of people on the street. The elderly are everywhere, distracted and broken. The young have left or are leaving. More than four hundred ‘austerity suicides’ a year and rising; unemployment, hopelessness, shame. ‘Lazy Greeks,’ ‘liars,’ ‘launderers,’ ‘Greek drachma,’ ‘Greek drama,’ ‘Grexit…’ There’s no end to the insults and innuendos.
Many Greeks are convinced that what is happening in their country is some kind of conspiracy. The feeling of victimization is palpable everywhere. The ‘Europeans’ want to prove a point. The Germans have no shame for WWII crimes. The British have the Parthenon marbles, the Turks have Cyprus and Greece’s northern neighbours taunt them with statues of Alexander the Great and Phillip II. The whole world is simply out to get them. One cannot help feeling that the Greeks are also suffering from a collective depression. There is very little to celebrate anymore. Weddings and christenings are a rarity. On the other hand, every day another humiliated and grief-stricken Greek ends his life. Referendum or not, ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ the general feeling is that nothing will change.
The European Union was premised on an idealized symbiosis of nations; a kind, cosmopolitan paradise of free movement, trade and cultural exchange. What it failed to take into account, however, was the gaping disparity between the living standards of the northern and southern states. Economies with different infrastructures and speeds were presumed to somehow keep up with each other; the advancing and poorer south with the advanced and affluent north. These were somehow expected to merge and ultimately coalesce into one great European family and economic powerhouse.
No one is arguing that the Greeks aren’t responsible for a great deal of their woes; even they acknowledge this. Generations of corrupt politicians, institutionalized nepotism and complacency have all brought them to where they are. However, one can only take so much. It’s time for some forgiveness so that people can begin the healing process. The IMF recently called for a ‘considerable write-down of Greece’s debt.’ It is understandable that many in the EU resent such a suggestion – particularly when there are other states that are also suffering. With an unemployment rate of 26% and over 50% amongst the youth, there is nowhere to go but down or out. Soon, all of Greece’s youth, brains and skilled workers will have left the country, meaning there will be nobody left to pay the debt anyway. The Germans may indeed have a legitimate point about having to foot the bulk of Greece’s bill, but ultimately, something and someone’s got to give and perhaps now is the time to do it.
*Dimitri Gonis is a lecturer in Modern Greek Studies at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

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