southeastern europe

Until yesterday morning I was arguing that although I did not support the 'no' vote I would support the government in its negotiations. I criticized people who were drawn to the vortex of the polarization the referendum had caused and suggested we all needed to look ahead.  Yet, the government itself arrived in Brussels with no proposals. Alexis Tsipras snubbed the European Parliament before he finally accepted to appear there today. He invited the leaders of the Greek political parties in a conference about the country's next moves and called for national unity while winking at those who at the same time vilified figures who supported the 'yes' campaign. The silence that shrouds the inclusion of the half million of nazis who voted no into the 'progressive' 'people' was in sharp contrast with the wanton and determined campaign to bundle together and brand those who voted 'yes' as collaborators of the Germans (resurrecting terms that were u...

published in openDemocracy on 1 July 2015 The announcement of the decision of the prime minister of Greece in the early hours of last Saturday, to hold a referendum on whether Greece should accept the draft agreement of a new debt relief programme or not, took me by surprise.  Having been active in the Eurocommunist Left of the 1980s I was aware that the claims that SYRIZA saw itself as an upholder of that pro-European Left tradition were largely exaggerated, but despite my private doubts on this issue, I did not expect the agenda of the party to include the possibility of an exit from the Eurozone and, more importantly, a profound clash with Greece’s European partners.  So, last Saturday morning, as I was frantically going through news stories about the Greek debt crisis and what appeared to be the collapse of the negotiations between Greece and its creditors I came across various explanations about what had transpired.  Tsipras, some reports said, had been h...

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a note on the May 6, 2012 Greek elections appeared in Diplomaatia Elections in Greece by Spyros A.Sofos Instead of the traditional left-right division, Greek political landscape is increasingly divided according to the parties’ attitudes towards austerity measures. On May 6, just less than six months after the coalition government of technocrat Lucas Papademos succeeded that of beleaguered prime minister George Papandreou in order to initiate the reforms agreed at the Eurozone summit on October 26, 2011, Greek voters went to the polls to elect a new parliament and government against a rather gloomy backdrop. The path to the polls The sovereign debt crisis had exacerbated the contraction of the economy and the increase of unemployment (now affecting one in every three young people). The desperate attempts of the last Panhellenic Socialist Movement  (PASOK) and the subsequent tripartite coalition government to raise revenues through hastily concocted ...