By Harris Farmakis
For reasons of basic dignity, justice and democracy, Syriza must win the election. A New Democracy win would legitimize the assault on democracy that is being carried out systematically over the last five years and would further advance the transformation of Greece into a debt colony.
That said, the situation on the ground is extremely challenging and there are serious doubts about the way Syriza is planning to deal with it.
The biggest worry with Syriza stems from its leading team’s insistence on its own version of the TINA mantra, the view that there is no alternative course for Greece other than the Eurozone one.
It is perfectly understandable that, for reasons of principle as well as strategy, Syriza should not repudiate at the outset the EZ institutional framework; however, its strong rejection of any talk of plan B, its denial to map out any alternatives to the compromise they think is unavoidable at the top political level, limits, not only the democratic horizon of the people, but also Syriza’s own mandate.
A strategy based on secretly drawn out alternative plans for the eventuality that the negotiations fail will be self defeating, as it has not been presented to the electorate for approval. In all, it is disheartening to note that, five years after the beginning of the crisis, Greece still has no credible alternative own course to follow, other than the one that is, or will be, agreed at international supranational levels with limited input from the people.
Long before the ‘official’ start of the crisis, Greek society had developed its own idiosyncratic modes of survival: parallel economic and organizational structures, ad-hoc temporary solutions to deep seated and pressing problems, laxness towards the enforcement of laws.
Taken together, these features constituted a system in unstable equilibrium, a precarious arrangement that had a double edge: on the one hand, it allowed people to get by on more or less their own terms within an inefficient and dysfunctional state, a non-conducive social environment and a non-competitive economy that was supposed to compete at the same level as advanced northern European economies, but, on the other hand, it also heightened injustice and held the creative forces of the youth, the state and the economy back.
The arrival of the Troika with the imposition of harsh austerity inside a punitive, authoritarian and depressing climate, the privatizations and so-called structural neo-liberal reforms, the systematic violations of democracy, have fractured this social arrangement and taken even the right to survival away from the more insecurely situated layers of society; what is more, they have greatly reduced Greece’s resources (human, natural and capital) and largely destroyed its productive capacity.
All in all, the memoranda and they way they were imposed on Greek society, have left the country inside a trap from which, in my opinion, it cannot escape with a mere reformist agenda, no matter how noble and well implemented that may be. The country needs all encompassing change and this, in the present circumstances, could be triggered only by a numismatic change which, by its very nature, reaches out to and affects every segment of society and economy, like a fluid that is poured in a vessel rushes to occupy all the empty spaces in it.
The point of course is not that Grexit is a sufficient condition for Greece to prosper, but that, as things stand, it is a necessary one: without it, the transformation of society into a just one, of the political system into a truly democratic one and of the economy into a productive one, cannot (or, at any rate, has very little chances to) be accomplished.
However, despite any misgivings about Syriza’s program and strategy, there is no denying that this is a party that, overall, has managed extremely well the arduous road it had to travel over the last five years. When the critical time came, it alone grasped the nature and extent of the problem and stood up to the occasion; it kept its ground on matters of principle; it disseminated widely and effectively its central message of democracy, humanism, social justice and inclusiveness in the face of fascism; it defended the dignity and rights of all people that are living in Greece, without resorting to xenophobia and unjust or moralistic blanket accusations; all the while having to fight the unequal war it was subjected to by the all-powerful elites in Greece and abroad.
Having gone through these trials, it now presents itself as the pioneering agent for positive change across Europe. For these reasons, any well intentioned and progressive person must wish that Syriza withstands the huge pressure that is being exerted on it, wins the election, and vindicates, to the maximum extent possible, the democratic choice of the people.