With a chill north wind blowing and the numbers of police carrying riot shields and wearing body armour growing steadily larger, Athenians passed along the lines in a grim fury yesterday.
Grey-haired and dragging on a cigarette, Yannis Yannarakos had a lifetime of grievance to direct at Greek leaders and the European paymasters with their feet on the nation’s throat.
“The strong will always throw the weak on the rocks,” he said. “Why did these countries lend to us when they knew we could not pay? Why did we take the money and open our markets but not look to ourselves?”
With a bitter sigh he answered his own questions. “Because they wanted control and now they order us around. No one asked me if I wanted all these loans. I’d be quite happy if we did not pay them back but got on with our own way of doing things.”
The scars of months of violent protests litter central Athens. Broken stones and daubs of paint in Syntagma Square in front of parliament are the symbols of Greece’s freefall from thriving European outpost into distressed debtor. The people crossing the square cannot avoid finding omens of the future in its detritus.
John Meletidis, a kiosk owner, is one of many who feel as if they are hanging on by their fingertips. Pointing at the drunks and illegal immigrants, he was hunted by premonitions. “In a good case I may be able to gather enough to go back to my village in Thrace,” he said. “In a bad case I may have to take my wife and move to Australia.”
Nearby, the owner of a clothes shop could barely contain her anger : “We have become slaves to Europe because no one up there can find the solution to our problems.”
It is commonplace to rail against the flaws that drove the state to bankruptcy. Statistics that betray the extent of the state’s failure are part of everyday conversation. One million people, or a tenth of the population, last year gave a backhander to the civil service to grease the wheels of bureaucracy. Only 15,000 people declared earnings of more than €100,000 in 2010 but one in 20 purchasers of £2 million houses in London lived in Greece.
But the realistic cautioned that everyone was tainted by the system of political patronage. “The politicians used power to be re-elected, so they used the system to get supporters jobs and advantages with the state,” said Manos Psaroudakis, 25, a civil engineer. “Nobody asked if this was right. It wasn’t a mystery, we all knew it was about beating the system.”
Greece is a state where the old assumptions have been torn apart. At the doors of the Bank of Greece, an employee claimed to be as bemused as her neighbours. “We get so much new information every day that’s its impossible to know what’s going on,” said Marina Constanou. “I remain optimistic because if we do not we will lose something of our character.”
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