Greek political leaders on Sunday put on their brave faces, in the best of patriotic traditions. They would have us believe that they were resisting the demands of Greece’s international creditors –the so-called troika- in order to save the country –and beyond.

By Grigoris Nikolopoulos

No one really knows how tough a fight they put up. It is actually doubtful that the troika had insisted -as it was claimed-  on the abolition of the Christmas and holiday bonuses –the so-called 13^th and 14^th salaries, or on cuts in supplementary pensions, or even vaguely on a lowering of the minimum wage.

However, it was easy for anyone to see the political leaders’ hard slog to avoid, once again, political cost and appear as saviors. They would have us believe that after many hours of discussions they had still not agreed on a package of measures that they had known for months.

The ancient Greek oracle of Delphi –the “navel of the world”- would have been envious of the statement of Giorgos Karatzaferis, leader of the nationalist LAOS party:

“I will not contribute to the outbreak of a revolution from destitution which will then reduce the whole of Europe to cinders”.

What does the poet really mean? That he will stop troika measures causing destitution, or that he will prevent the destitution caused by the country’s exit from the euro if the measures are not adopted?

Conservative New Democracy’s Antonis Samaras was also in a combative mood:

“The country cannot take any more recession. I am fighting in any way I can to prevent it”.

Last, PASOK leader George Papandreou, who appears to have concentrated his objections on whether the recapitalization of Greek banks will be done with common or preferred shares and also expressed disagreement,  hastened to ask for his party’s  backing in his effective consent.

To be sure, Papandreou was the one who as prime minister, together with his finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, took the initiative, in the spring of 2010, to bring the IMF and the EU to Greece, subjecting the country to international fiscal overseeing and compounding the job of bankruptcy began by his lazy and weak predecessor Kostas Karamanlis.

These are the political leaders who are still cheekily engaged in histrionics, when an entire people and the world community expect, at last, a clear statement.

The serial, who many interpret as a thriller but seems to be evolving into a tragicomedy, will go on for one or two days more –enough to conclude the show of struggling to save the people; a battle they have lost long ago, in unison as well as separately.

In actual fact, the only fight they are putting up is to save the pretences in order to stay afloat politically. It is a phony and petty political battle, for they hope that Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will shoulder the political cost and they will not get their feet wet. Besides being bad actors, they hope to maintain the respect of their spectators whom they disrespect themselves. It’s a measure of how naïve they are…