Greece is not repaying the IMF. It simply cannot. The eight austerity plans imposed by financial technocrats has resulted in this payment default. Europe has failed to help Greece but zealous bigwigs have come out with guns blazing in order to shift the blame for this collapse to the Greek people.
Like a teacher trying to pass on a lesson to a dunce, Angela Merkel holds out a blackmail that is unfair: "If the Euro fails, Europe fails." It sums up the sham of building a unified Europe. In Sunday’s referendum, Greeks have little choice but to give in or get out.
The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, added his bit of hypocrisy to the collective chant: "A ’no’ to the referendum shall mean no to Europe." It sounds familiar indeed! In 2005, a few days before the French referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty, the ideological steamroller had already promised chaos in case the verdict was ’no’.
Dissent has no place in their scheme of things. However, if Greece says ’no’, this little country would simply affirm its refusal to a plan that would hike VAT, do away with aid to those on a tiny pension and increase pressure on modest wage earners.
The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is right when he explains that rejecting this proposal would put Greece in a better position to negotiate another deal. The Greeks do not wish to leave the Euro zone. Nor does their governement. Rather, they are asking for a new Europe.
Let us reflect on the rules of living as a community, founded on fiscal and social harmonisation, ridding tax havens of their raison d’être, striving to put in place a statutory minimum wage for the whole of Europe, with a Central Bank that lends directly at zero lending rates to countries in difficulty...Had it been such a common house, the Greeks would not have been forced to disobey.
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