After his trip to Texas and Washington (we still don’t
know who he met there and what was the nature of the discussion) we heard that
the only way the Eurozone can be saved is by saving the European south. Tsipras
put his no confidence vote once the plane had landed. So did he work this out
on the way back from the States or was there a discussion with other members of
the leadership by phone from the USA?
Having no hope of winning as no confidence votes
have never shown a break in the ruling party formations as ND has a 50 MP bonus
he managed to achieve 124 votes with GD, KKE, Ind Greeks voting with his motion
with the knowledge of course that only MPs from PASOK and ND could bring down
their own government. In the end one
PASOK MP voted against and was expelled and another claimed he was ill and didn’t
turn up to vote. The main area of dispute has been the new taxes on
agricultural land and property plus liberalising all repossessions, which has
seen around 70 ND MPs baulking at the vote. Stratoulis from Syriza had stated
that PASOK previously in 2011 had won a No Confidence vote but soon thereafter
Papandreou was given his marching orders. Hence the question remains what does
Tsipras know we don’t and why did he place the No Confidence Vote?
Only a few thousand turned up at the Sindagma rally
showing that Syriza once more has no actual support in society and the vote to
it was a reaction to all else than support for its EU neo-liberal policies.
So what it going on. The Troika cannot impose any
more new taxes, the ruling parties have fragmented and ND is on the way to
becoming the new PASOK. It has been in power for 16 months around the same time
Papandreou lasted from when he called the IMF into Greece way back in May 2010.
Samaras is now a busted flush his bonapartist measures whereby paramilitary
shootouts occur to generalise the theory of the ‘two extremes’ (murders of
antifascist rapper and two GD members) go nowhere and the crisis continues
unabated with around 25k public sector workers to be fired by Xmas and 150-250k
earmarked for the following two years. Unemployment continues to rise and the
scenes of young people scavenging in dustbins is widespread in Athens. We have
seen scenes of ruling party MPs calling their own ministers Leninists for
wanting to take away peoples property! The conclusion is we have a ruling
crisis and this flows from the fact that people no longer have any money to pay
the endless array of taxes. The state is shutting down and deregulating its
operations. The Universities have been closed since they opened after the govt
fired a majority of its admin staff. Hospitals aren’t functioning and thousands
of doctors have been given their marching orders.
In order to forestall an inevitable social explosion
they will either cut Samaras short replacing him with another joker of the
style of Papadimos or bring Syriza to power. That is where the fun will start
for Syriza will try to solve the unsolveable: remain in the Euro whilst
cancelling all payments to the debtors.
If there is a pan-European move in that direction
due to the fact that the Eurosceptics have the upper hand in two major
countries (France and UK) in the forthcoming Euroelections and the fact that
the role of the German finance ministry hasn’t been assigned alongside Brussels
starting an investigation into the full impact of Germany surpluses, the
Tsipras move is part of a wider plan. If on the other hand Tsipras wanted to
bring down the government he could have called for all the MP’s who voted with
him to withdraw from Parliament as he did mention that the govt rules on
Executive Decrees 22 in total in other words an IMF junta with the façade of
Parliamentary democracy but he could have, but didn’t.
Without a return to national currencies a
restoration of border controls in capital goods and labour and a national
strategy to restore economic activity as a first step to restore growth that
gives people work and a livelihood and the dissolution of the EU and the EZ we
will continue to go from bad to worse. This crisis isn’t going away.
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