Editorial: Leaps

The political leap from SYRIZA’s pre-electoral slogan “No home in the hands of a banker” to 11,443 auctions of foreclosed homes is huge. The enormity is not just arithmetical, even though the auctions have reached a five-digit number, but also social and political.

One can easily understand what this leap means for society. The government attempted to persuade public opinion that the auctions involve only debtors who are able to pay but do not, and that the properties being auctioned off are all villas and mansions.

In reality, the foreclosed property auctions in Greece involve the same category of debtors as in other countries, people who either were always in lower income brackets, or who fell into those brackets due to the protracted financial crisis. It is not that they did not want to pay, but they could not pay off their debts due to their professional struggle for survival.

Politically, the great leap highlighted the huge gap in the ruling party’s political rhetoric and practice, which has been explained away by the PM as self-deception regarding economic and political realities, but in fact constituted political fraud.

The property auctions are the result of the political fooling of the electorate, to which SYRIZA resorted in order to rise to power.

Even worse, after that political mockery there was not a single apology to the people who lost their homes, and whom the government described as wealthy parasites of society to boot.