Omaira Gill :
And so it happened. Greece, buckling under five years’ worth of austerity and decimated by debt repayments saw a red light at the cross-roads and turned left.
For me, it was a rollercoaster of a night and my first experience reporting on an election. Fellow journalists from all over the world watched the first exit polls come in, astonished. A win by Syriza had been expected, but not by such a large margin. My hands were shaking with adrenaline as I typed my report for this paper.
In the week that’s followed, a new cabinet has been announced, and Greece’s new left wing government has taken its first steps. It’s been an interesting week that’s said a lot about perspective and the role of the media in manufacturing events.
The new government is not even out of the starting blocks, and already media in much of Europe are writing its obituary, talking solemnly about how Greece’s experiment with the radical left is doomed to fail.
In recent years, Europe has swung so far to the right, that Syriza’s policies strike most as outrageously left wing, which is why they keep being called it radical. The fact is that policies that speak about reducing privatisation and creating more well-being for the population are centre-left policies, not radical left. It’s just the context in which they appear in early 2015 that has everyone placing Syriza in the same league as those crazy communists.
I didn’t vote on Sunday, because as a foreigner in Greece, I don’t enjoy this right. However, living in Greece, having to live this economic crisis, watching what it has done to the society around me and to people I know, I can’t help but wish the new government well, even if I have my own reservations.
I spoke to many people on the day of the election who had voted for Syriza. None of them told me that they voted for Syriza because they were able to capably demonstrate their abilities. They voted because they can’t take it any more. The unemployment rate has shot up from 12 per cent to 26 per cent with youth unemployment presently standing at 58 per cent. Nearly 15,000 civil servants have been laid off to date and the minimum wage has been cut to around 400 euros. Any wonder then the suicide rate has shot up by 25 per cent (between 2008-2011).
This is what austerity has done, it has stolen the hope and dignity of a nation and left them with the feeling that they have nothing more to lose. We all know there is nothing more dangerous than a person, or in this case population, with nothing to lose.
As I left the press centre in Zappeio, a beautiful marble building next to Syntagma square, it was eerily quiet. Several streets, away, Syriza supporters were celebrating. I walked over scattered flyers and past a man sleeping rough. It would make little difference to him which government he woke up to. He’d still be homeless tomorrow, another victim of this crisis.
It’s so often the case that taxi drivers are the best people to talk to about anything, and my driver that night was no exception. “We’re out of hope, we can’t take any more,” he said “What more is there for us to lose? We’ve already lost everything.
“There’s no money, no jobs. I didn’t vote for Syriza but we’re not northern Europe. What works there won’t work here, this is what they’ve not understood.” he said. He was calm and measured while he spoke. No hysterics here. He was tired, I was tired. We’re all so, so tired.
I’ve watched the coverage of the new government’s first steps this week, and this is what strikes me. The media cannot digest a government that talks about serving the people. They can’t get over it, and it makes them uncomfortable. That speaks volumes about how far the world has strayed from the idea of democracy that the very thought of a government with a mission to serve the people has the media up in arms.
Austerity as a system for keeping a banking system alive seems to have worked, just about. As a system for translating those tiny positives into a feeling of hope on the ground, into terms that ordinary people understand such as a little bit more money in the pocket or hope in their heart, it has failed miserably.
Perhaps its time that Europe and the rest of the world re-examined their dogged loyalty to a system as destructive as austerity.
In the mean time, give Greece a chance. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for us yet, but the world needs to stop begrudging a population for lighting a match along the way.
(Omaira Gill is a freelance journalist based in Athens)
