Editorial: Shackles

The primary surplus about which the government boasts, despite the fact that it was achieved through extreme over-taxation, is unfortunately not accompanied by a surplus of political trust.

On the contrary, our creditors’ lack of trust in our country remains enormous. It is at the level to which it had catapulted immediately after the true magnitude of the deficit was revealed by the government back then.

The responsibility for this deficit of political trust – which was not the case for other countries, such as Portugal, Ireland, and Cyprus, which completed bailout programmes – belongs to all the governments that ruled during the crisis.

A huge share of the responsibility belongs to the current SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government, even though it made the most dramatic about-face, or kolotoumpa, as the international press, using the Greek word, described the government’s reversal in complying with the memorandum.

As it appears today, that reversal has not convinced creditors. Those in power cannot even persuade in their new role as the lenders’ star pupils.

That explains the fact that the creditors are seeking a firm commitment from the government that it will not annul any of the bailout memorandum measures that it signed, and that it will religiously meet its commitments in the agreed upon timeframe.

From that, one surmises that, along with the government, the country will remain shackled. One also surmises that the post-memorandum shackles will not be looser than those under the memorandum.

This government detests this truth, and it is trying to hide it from the citizenry in the name of a political narrative that it believes will stem its losses at the polls.

It has no concern for the country’s losses.