Everything was in confusion in Athens. The Prime Minister devalued the drachma and the people pronounced themselves grossly deceived.
Less than five months after being gift-wrapped, PASOK’s pre-election packages of promises were unrecognizably tattered, and the pretty one tagged ‘a stablilized economy* looked like Eeyore’s burst balloon. Right, left and center were all inconsolable.
Most election promises and slogans, admittedly, mean next to nothing. Last May ND’s ‘no more import taxes on cars’ sounded fantastic or desperate; KKE’s ’18 percent-or-bust’ like wishful thinking, and PASOK’s poster ‘sweetheart’, a coyly waving 10-year-old girl, absurdly sentimental. But the most sweeping – and therefore most meaningless – catch-phrase was the government’s ‘for even better days’.
Five months later, KKE’s per-centage was lower than ever, import taxes on cars had been substantially increased, and the ‘sweetheart’ of PASOK’s teachers – like most angry employees – were on strike. Tor even better days’ re-mained a slogan, only now shouted ironically, with the addition “Enough! Let’s have no more of them.”
During May’s election campaign (if anyone can remember back that far), some members of the opposition and many voters, too, hoped that the election might be fought on the issue of the economic crisis whose existence was no secret. There had been talk about a necessary devaluation. The consensus had been of about 15 percent.
There had been talk of its happening in the autumn. The consensus had been October. There had even been talk that the government pushed the election, which had been expected in October, forward to May for this very reason. But the issue was lost in facile sloganeering.
As it came about, the government announced a 15 percent devalution on October 11 and everyone was appalled. A bombshell, a bolt out of the blue, the newspapers called it. But as most people read newspapers which reflect or strengthen the views they happen to hold and not to gain information, it’s likely most of them were dismayed and had reason to call themselves deceived.
If the devaluation came as a surprise, the austerity measures that accompanied or shortly followed it, ladled out in stiff doses, made people angry. These included a one-shot profits tax on business, a prohibitive import tax and, worst of all, a 27-month freeze on wages. There was even the possibility that Saint Basil’s end-or-year giftie, the 13th month wage made sacrosanct by tradition, might be abandoned or, if not, given out later in doses and taxed. Conspicuously missing was the measure most necessary: that which would attract productive investment. But this would mean throwing sops to the private sector which would be contrary to the government’s beloved socializations.
The government was not going to take blame for this sorry state of affairs, though it was not above accepting a share in it. There was the stagnant international economy and there was ‘the past’. The past in PASOKese means the endless succession of right-wing governments that preceded it. If there was a measure of truth here, it is a fact that the foreign debt has increased fourfold in the last four years. Yet the government, expanding historically, claimed that before World War II, the economy was structured to serve the interests of a hundred families. It might have been as relevant to take back this ‘national heritage’ to Themistocles and his inflationary naval policy.
The response to the devaluation and the austerity measures was a run on buying imported goods of all kinds, from cars to butter, videos to whisky, leaving market shelves bare. There were even wild rumors of mysterious, noctural troop movements and of an impending government seizure of safety deposit boxes. As a result, the ladies of Kolonaki scurried to bank vaults with velvet sachels to carry home their gold pounds and store them in that traditional place of refuge, the mattress – a greater incentive to housebreakers than to productive investors.
It was the number of strikes, and the numbers who turned out to strike, that was imposing. On October 21, a nationwide general strike, – over a million workers in Athens alone – paralyzed the city and was followed by other strikes for the next four days by hospital staffers, transit workers, bank employees and construction workers.
For better days or worse, the government seemed determined to adhere to its unpopular measures despite the first strong and confused reaction. It was not clear, though, that if public resistance continued, how it could recapture its credibility.
One thing could be safely said about the devaluation, the austerity measures and the reaction to them: they were the only events to have taken place since June which were not held in context of “Athens: Cultural Capital of Europe 1985.”
