The appeal was ignored. The day before the Olympic Committee’s vote, the two leading unions declared a nation-wide 48-hour walkout, and on the day of the ballot a million strikers brought the country to a standstill, often pitch-dark as there were frequent power failures.
Some felt this civil agitation may have given Athens’ rivals opportunity to arouse qualms in some IOC members and therefore affect the poll. Others uncharitably suspected that this was the very reason the strikes were called. That it was better to lose the bid than give the government the satisfaction of winning it, demonstrates the rancor which some people believe is felt in the ranks of the left.
Public transport was paralysed, as well hospitals, banks, municipal services and public utilities. Most dramatic were the power shortages that dimmed streets and squares, and caused frequent and long blackouts. People grew lean stranded in lifts; others grew fat consuming all their defrosted foods. Some were reminded of simpler, happier days when the country was lit by kerosene lamps and candles. Others were less romantically inclined: the Association of Consumers considered suing DEI for incompensation for economic losses and health problems.
Probably the government was not firm with the strikers, making few arrests when it had legal rights to make more; wavering over civil mobilization and giving the impression of weakness. When President Karamanlis stepped into the picture, warning that the country was in deep and dangerous financial crisis and calling for sacrifices on the part of everybody, labor union leaders instead proclaimed another nationwide, 48-hour strike, even though the Athens Court of the First Instance had ruled that the strikes called by the public power corporation were “illogical and abusive.”
Since very little had been done (including garbage removal) in the week that separated the big walkouts, the second one even more striking to the senses.
Although Greeks are in the habit of carrying large sums of cash with them (which makes attache case and purse snatching so profitable), after the banks had been closed for two weeks, it looked as though the country might revert to the more gracious era of barter. But as Greeks not so long ago were quite able to get along with hardly any money at all, the country managed, being always at its best in adversity. Proprietors of neighborhood markets and kiosks once again jotted down credit accounts in greasy little pads just as they did in the old days.
Tourists suffered rather worse as they were trying to get home. Desperate remedies to increase tourist revenue by preventing them from leaving is quite self-defeating when they are unable to cash, let along spend, much desired foreign currencies. But the high-point of the bank empolyees’ strike took place on September 26 when Finance Minister John Paleokrassas went to the Central Bank to withdraw some badly needed cash and was prevented from doing so by the strikers.
If Greeks get on with little money, it was the great amount of garbage, building up in mountains of black plastic sacks in unseasonably hot weather, that stood as a vivid monument to the gross over-consumption which is behind the whole economic mess.
In the end the social security bill passed through parliament by a majority of one. Then everyone went back to work. Behind the austerity measures is the simple fact that the country has a 100 billion public debt; equally simple is the fact the strikes cost the economy half that sum, an estimated 50 billion drachmas.
This kind of civil behavior, or misbehavior, self-serving and suicidal at the same time, has puzzled many people, and many explanations have been forthcoming in a country to which generalities are so dear and practicalities despised.
“Strikes are a double-edged sword,” warned former communist MP Mikis Theodorakis, now Minister Without Portfolio,” and woe betide those who use it for party expediencies… It took 15 years for the ‘allaghi of yore’ (PASOK) to dissolve the Greek student movement.” Mr Theodorakis had nothing to fear. In the municipal elections coverall weeks later, PASOK did very well indeed.
Much yardage was taken up in op/ ed columns to explain the inexplicable. Referring to the striking civil servants in particular, but to others, too, Nikos Simos had this to say in Kathimerini.
“They have not comprehended the magnitude of the crisis in certain very basic ways. One, because they identify the state with some metaphysical concept and therefore do not understand that the state is in fact themselves and not something abstract. Consequently, in not realizing that what the state pays out comes from all of us, they will not part with a drachma from their pockets in taxes, and so forth, if they can help it.”
So narrow is the sense of commonwealth, so short-sighted that of personal gain, that appeals to reduce the indebtedness that will be passed on to their children is ignored.
This civic alienation Mr Simos attributes to the deep distrust which people have felt for the whole system of government, cultivated for generations. It is believed the social contract has been ripped up so many times that its pieces cannot be cellotaped back together.
The big question, Mr Simos concludes, is this:”Who is there who really comprehends where we are headed?”
A government which has confused democratic nicities with a certain flabbiness? An opposition which has confused any sense of responsibility with a thirst to destroy its political adversaries at whatever national cost? Or a people who have confused their civil rights with their civil responsibilities – and the government with the National Mint?
