An April Fools economy

The leaders of Greece’s coalition parties are due to meet on Wednesday, a day before the troika returns to Athens to resume its latest inspection of Greek public finances and check on the progress of structural reforms. Reports indicate that among the subjects which will dominate both Wednesday’s talks and subsequent meetings with officials from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund are the collection of an emergency property tax and installments for unpaid debts to the state.

The talks will take place in the wake of Eurostat figures showing that Greece, for the first time since the crisis began, has the highest unemployment rate (26.4 percent) in the euro area. At the same time, Greece’s leading economic think-tank, IOBE, warned that the current rate of unemployment in this country is unsustainable and that 60 percent of jobless people had been without work for at least 12 months. Also this week, Markit’s PMI showed that manufacturing in Greece, which accounts for almost 15 percent of the economy, continued to fall in March as it has done since September 2009. Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has reportedly revised this year’s recession figure to 5 percent of GDP from 4.5 percent.

To say that the talks between Greece and the troika will have a touch of the surreal about them given the mauling that the real economy is suffering is probably an understatement.

From austerity to Ottocracy: Rehhagel’s return

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis

Otto Rehhagel has proved throughout his long career as a soccer player and coach that he has many qualities. Diplomacy was never one of them. “Everyone’s free to say what I want,” he once told journalists. His tendency to gradually assume total control of the German clubs he managed even merited its own term – Ottocracy.

Yet, at the age of 74, Rehhagel is being called on by his homeland to show tact and sensitivity on a mission to Greece, which was his adopted home between 2001 and 2010 when he coached the Greek national team. Bild newspaper provided the rather surprising news on Wednesday that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had chosen Rehhagel to go on a goodwill mission to Athens in a bid to give relations between the two countries a boost and ensure that German tourists give the Greek economy a lift over the summer.

Although Rehhagel will reportedly meet with President Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras during the visit, his assignment appears to be the latest attempt at low-level micro-diplomacy between Germany and Greece.

Tsipras tackles speech impediment

Illustration by Manos Symeonakis

SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is to attend the funeral of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez but this will not be his most significant political statement of the week or month. That came when he delivered a speech on Wednesday night at an event in Athens held to mark 15 years since the death of New Democracy founder and late Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis.

In many European countries, a political leader from one ideological camp paying respects to the memory of a politician from the other side of the spectrum might not be particularly noteworthy. Tsipras’s address, though, broke several taboos in Greece.

Karamanlis has widely been acknowledged for his statesmanship in leading Greece from the pain of the dictatorship to the prosperity of European Union membership. But his prominent role during a turbulent period in Greek politics before the rise of the junta meant that many on the left had trouble accepting him as the national father figure (“ethnarhis”) others portrayed him to be. On the flip side, the Greek left has traditionally remained entrenched and introspective, largely as a result of the scars inflicted by civil war, persecution and the colonel’s regime. Even since the restoration of democracy in 1974, the left has rarely accepted any practical cooperation or ideological cross-pollination with the country’s right.

A house in the middle of the street

 

It must have been almost a year ago when Dionysiou Areopagitou Street was teeming with Athenians and visitors as spring escaped from the clutches of a drab and depressing winter to spray paint the capital’s most attractive walkway with color. Reveling in the sunshine and the essence of hope, smiles re-emerged on people’s faces, eyes twinkled and hearts beat in rhythm.

 

The sun’s appearance seemed to banish the doubts that had been pummeled into Greeks’ minds as a result of the collapse of George Papandreou’s government a few months earlier, the worsening economic situation and the fears about the country’s future in the euro.

 

It proved to be a false dawn, but on that sun-kissed March day in Athens, there was a hint that normality might return, that a stroll in the shadow of the Parthenon could be carefree. The Attic light streamed into each corner and pore as hundreds of people sauntered around the Acropolis and along a road named after an Athenian judge, Dionysius the Areopagite.

 

Walking free or striding to jail?

They called him the “flying doctor” due to his sprinting exploits in the 1970s and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras referred to him in the past as an “honest man,” but on Wednesday the only place ex-Thessaloniki Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos was striding to was Diavata Prison, where he is reportedly sharing a cell with nine rather dishonest men.

Papageorgopoulos and two ex-municipal employees were given life sentences for embezzling some 18 million euros from City Hall between 1999 and 2010, when the New Democracy politician served two terms as Thessaloniki mayor. Papageorgopoulos draped an overcoat over his arms as he left for prison to hide his handcuffs from photographers but it’s difficult to imagine what part of his reputation the 65-year-old thought he was protecting after being convicted of systematically plundering taxpayers’ money for over a decade. Nevertheless, Papageorgopoulos denies any wrongdoing and says he will appeal the decision.

While there is undoubtedly a personal story in all this (the tale of how a man who once competed for medals on the track ended up competing for space in a prison exercise yard), Papageorgopoulos’s spectacular fall carries two significant and wider implications for Greece.