After years of lurching here and there, it appears Greece may be reaching some kind of ending. Maybe, possibly. The situation seems to change by the minute, but at this stage a referendum seems likely (though not guaranteed) for Saturday.
The Greek government has been the master of the mixed signal of late. On the one hand, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has been consistently pointing out how terrible Greece's creditors are. On the other, his government continues to offer further concessions, well beyond their original intentions.
As it stands, no-one really knows what will happen. Not Syriza, not the troika, not the Greek people, not economists and certainly not you or me. This is territory untravelled. No economy within the Eurozone has defaulted since joining, and there is no mechanism to leave the Euro. There is also no conceivable end to Greece's depression if they continue the pattern of scraping through their monthly repayments with continued austerity at the level of debt they have.
Should the referendum happen? I see no reason why not. Syriza was elected on a platform of ending austerity. Given that the acceptance of the troika proposals would mean further austerity, it is reasonable that the government should want the people to decide whether they want the government to renege on this promise. It would also be a rare occasion in the history of the European Project where the people get a say in their future. Generally when this happens, it doesn't go the way those inside the EU want, which is precisely why it is a rare occurrence.
That the referendum is rushed and somewhat unplanned goes without saying. The entire response to Greece for the past five years has seemed fairly unplanned. Certainly, there has never been established a point at which Greece will have returned to having a functioning economy. That a referendum should happen in a similar manner in order to decide the fate of such a lack of planning seems appropriate. (This is assuming that the troika were not entirely complicit the whole way through of ensuring that there wouldn't be an end to the crisis, a point which some would argue. Personally, I doubt the troika have such far-sighted abilities, though it seems clear they were quite happy to place an enormous burden on Greece for personal gain.)
So in the case it does happen, as it should, what will the result be?
It will be a matter of which emotion is stronger: fear, or pride. Fear what could result from the saying no to the troika, institutions which have essentially controlled Greece for five year; or pride in the belief that enough is enough, and no matter the consequences, it cannot be worse than what they are already experiencing.
It's a tough choice, but it's one they should never have been put in the position to make in the first place. It is hard to believe that Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, genuinely believes that further austerity is truly the solution to Greece's woes. You do not get that far by being unintelligent, and anyone can see that austerity is what has caused Greece's economy to spend years shrinking, putting them in an even worse position to pay off the debt that has been loaded onto them than when they started.
But the primary reason Schäuble and his compatriots across the Eurozone have been pushing austerity harder and harder has little to do with economics, and much more to do with politics. Austerity in other countries is popular at home. Schäuble's personal approval rating in Germany is through the roof, so why would he not continue down that path? There are no bad domestic political consequences for him in doing so, and thus his personal stake in the matter is secure, and the same is true for the rest of those pushing austerity.
Does it seem right that the future of a nation and its people should be used as a political device by other sovereign states who routinely intervene in the nation's affairs? Of course not. It completely contradicts the idea of sovereignty, and indeed of statehood. That this is a regular theme of the actions European Union should not go unnoticed. At this point, it is clear what a yes vote means for Greece: further austerity, further intervention with no end in sight. When such an option is given, the unknown suddenly becomes less fearful.
This, I believe, is why the polls are so close. Fear is a powerful emotion which many politicians and other powerful people have used to their advantage since time immemorial. But the Greeks have now known fear for so long that even such a strong emotion may have lost its power.
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