REPORTERNET.COM

Monday’s Eurogroup agreement may not be a cure-for-all Greek ills but it is certainly the best we could have obtained presently.

If Greece’s international creditors, the so-called troika, ultimately succeed in persuading our politicians to shrink the public sector, they will have addressed the core of the country’s problem. For the term  “private sector” in Greece is really a misnomer.

Europe has been trapped in its own foolishness, incompetence and heartlessness, and will soon be forced to change to avoid dissolution.

Many in Europe –particularly in Germany- wonder why they should continue providing financial support to a country that has failed to honor its commitments with partners and is an international laggard in key indicators –competitiveness, innovation and transparency.

The reduction in incomes which Greece’s new economic program brings would make sense only if we could hope that the problems of recession and the country’s excessive debt could be solved in a reasonable period of time. Unfortunately, the new program deals with neither problem. The recession will deepen and the debt will remain unviable.

It’s a curious thing that even at this crucial moment, when the future of the country hangs in the balance, its political class cannot clearly “read” our creditors’ stance and intentions. Do they do not understand that the troika’s hard stance is dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the European power centers?

We are all watching breathless the endless unpopular serial of Greece’s negotiations with the troika, wondering whether our political leaders will finally utter “Yes” or raise the flag of the revolution against the foreign “occupiers,” but the true significance of some developments goes amiss.

The negotiations with Greece’s international creditors –the so-called troika- on the final details of the economic program that will accompany a second, €130 billion bailout loan seem to have developed into an endless unpopular serial, thanks largely to political leaders that refuse to shoulder their responsibilities, and with a public opinion that appears unable to follow elementary logic.  At the same time, misplaced –often provocative- statements by European officials offer little help in steering us away from a mass nervous breakdown.

If I come across the expression, “crucial next 48 hours,” again I think I am going to have a nervous breakdown. Our political leaders are bent on rattling our nerves in order to derive petty political gains, elbowing each other to claim that they have managed to wrest yet one more concession from the claws of the rapacious troika. As if anyone believes them any more…