One would have hoped that the extremely deep crisis that is continuing in our country would have made the political system wiser.

Instead, we have seen political forces resorting to various methods – which are directly linked to the causes that led to the crisis – to rise to power. We saw them appealing to the emotions, using their supposed self-deceptions to deceive the electorate, fueling the baser instincts, justifying violence, and marshaling models that divide people into categories: traitors and patriots, German collaborators and heroes of an imaginary resistance.

The SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government managed, with this tried and tested but caatastrophic method, to gain power. As if they had not learned from the bailout memorandum that they were dragged into, they are marshaling another tried and tested but catastrophic tactic, that of untrammeled pledges of handouts.

The government is returning, in other words, to the policies of civil service hiring and welfare benefits, which were implemented between 2004 and 2009, with disastrous results.

It is said, quite rightly, that whoever does not learn from the past has no future.

That past is too recent for the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government not to see that unhampered promises of handouts lead to fiscal derailment and offer nothing in terms of political gain.

Such false promises harm both the economy and democracy, and do not benefit the people.

They constitute vote-mongering, and they corrupt consciences.