Greece faces renewed political turmoil over a sovereign debt crisis that has ushered in austerity measures and triggered wide-spread violent protests. The Greek government announced Monday it would hold new elections in the face of massive and violent demonstrations against a new austerity package that was approved on Sunday in exchange for a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout.
Under the austerity plan, Greece will fire 15,000 public sector workers this year and 150,000 by 2015. The minimum wage will be reduced by 22 percent, and pension plans will be be cut. As lawmakers voted, 100,000 people protested outside the Parliament building in Athens.
Protesters, angered by news, engaged in rioting, looting and setting fire to dozens of stores and buildings. 160 people were detained, and dozens were treated for injuries. Maria Margaronis, London correspondent for The Nation magazine, was on the ground in Greece last week covering the crisis. Greece faces an “impossible choice,” she told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. “Either to default on its loans by March, when it owes a massive loan payment, or to accept this desperate austerity program, which will further sink the economy.”
“The Greek people have really had enough of this. People are exhausted and desperate. On the street in Athens, there’s a sense of everything breaking down.”
Trade union leader Ilias Iliopoulos condemned the violence, but said the government had to listen to the people. “People sent a message yesterday: Enough is enough! They can’t take it anymore,” Iliopoulos, general secretary of public sector union ADEDY, told Reuters. “The social explosion will come one way or another, there is nothing they can do about it any more.”
But in the face of mayhem, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos maintains that the alternative would trigger far worse results. “A disorderly default would set the country on a disastrous adventure,” Papademos told parliament. “It would create conditions of uncontrolled economic chaos and social explosion.”
“The country would be drawn into a vortex of recession, instability, unemployment and protracted misery and this would sooner or later lead the country out of the euro,” he added.
Greece already appears to be in a vortex of recession, instability, unemployment and misery. Whether the country would be better off out of the euro at this point remains a question.