On Greece’s future, political parties, elections, eurozone exit

Get rid of the euro and you’ll be safe

Regards from Finland!

You won’t get your independence back if you have more debt — that just makes you more of a slave to the banks, and that way the land around your country will not be yours.

So get rid of the euro and you will be safe, sooner than us in Finland, you should know that we have too much debt and this will crush us, and that’s not because we are supporting you now; besides actually we are just supporting some banks.

See what Argentina did? You can pay the debt you have to the banks now, little by little, but don’t get in more debt. But you can do everything even better than Argentina.

You will be poor now but you know how to live and cultivate food and make enough electricity for hospitals and for everything essential. What people need — water, food, warmth, occasional medical care, a sense of community, work. There you can be a good example of how to be happy… faster than you can imagine, you will be happy; people just want to believe in something, and be part of it, and what’s better to believe than the future of the country and its children?

If you choose this, you will be better than us in Finland after some decades. Be patient! That’s real life, to build and rebuild things, and bit by bit to get independence — trust me.

In Finland we are destroying all our natural assets, letting the big international companies build mines etc, but we don’t get the profits, just a bit, that’s what the banks are pushing us. We sell our ground to be able to get cheaper loans. So what are we going to have after decades?

You can make your own laws, for example maybe to cultivate cannabis, maybe the best energy, food, oil, medicinal, fibre plant. That needs some new education, investigation.

You are wise people.

This doesn’t mean that without the euro and more debt you cannot collaborate with the other countries — that will be maybe different but possible, exchanging things.

You need some good leaders who can explain things to people; now maybe they are not patient or they don’t believe in anything.

Get rid of the leeches, and then start to build things again.

Mikko Keranen

An obvious result

No constitutional reforms were proposed by anyone: a very large proportion of voters voted against ND and Pasok, not only because of their pro-euro stance, but out of despair of ever having their voice directly heard through a more democratic system. To offer one example, the biggest electorate turnout in France happens both in the presidential election but also in the mayors elections — since in a real democracy, local power has power! The ego-centric ex-leading parties didn’t see it coming! The intellectuals didn’t see it coming! But trust me, we Europeans saw it coming!

Marc Sursock Geneva,

Switzerland

Greece in bloom

What great foresight; «Greece in Bloom» brings one back to reality. Concentrating on where we came from and where we are going is very healthy. The growth and the beauty of our countries enhance the good as well as the bad times that citizens endure.

Betty Fowler

Electoral disaster

To see so many seats go toward the far right and the far left leaves me seeking to uncover our family guns. Surely evil days are once again upon Hellas, just as they were in my father’s day after WWII when the evil of communism sought to destroy the land where democracy was created.

Now, with communists getting so many seats when if they had power they would cancel all future elections, I must clean out and load our guns.

Civil war cannot be far away and the so-called super powers are laughing their racist heads off.

Alexandros Kapsalis

Epirus

Beware the lunatic left, not the right

Greeks, well what can I say? Bravo on another display of utter stupidity and embarrassment. You have done nothing more than embarrass yourselves in front of the whole world yet again.

While my thoughts and feelings go out to the people who are suffering due to economic hardship and employment concerns, the option you had was very clear. Vote for stability and the path to growth and sustainability would materialise. I mean, after all, you did agree to join the EU and the eurozone and this accession carries with it enormous privilege and responsibility.

However, large segments of the country abused this privilege. This isn’t the first time this has happened. At the end of WWI and WWII, the left decided to blockade our country’s important role in the restoration of human ideals by agreeing to partition Macedonia and Thrace from the country and by forcing us into a civil war.

Today, the left has reared its ugly head again and will now lead us into national oblivion.

Now, with great interest, we will watch KKE and SYRIZA embark on the complete de-Christianisation of our country and the relegation of our great national achievements from classical antiquity and Byzantium into oblivion and our survival of the crusades and the Ottoman era will be nothing but folklore.

Our national heroes will no longer be Alexander the Great, Phillip of Macedon, Socrates, Olympias, Plato, Aristotle, Heraclius, Basil II, Constantine the Great and Dr Papanicolas, but Nikos Zachariades and Harolaos Florakis.

Greeks, congratulations once again. In 20 years’ time, when you are an insignificant province of Western Turkey, cast adrift from the EU, and when Macedonia is part of greater FYROM, you will only need to remember May 6, 2012, and blame yourselves.

James Balis

Sydney

How wrong you were

Dear Mr Papachelas

I recall an article you wrote not long ago on how smart Mr Karatzaferis was when he voted for the first memorandum and he was making all the right moves etc, etc. How wrong you were!

It’s time you realized you are wrong about a lot of things!

Thomas Lakos

Melbourne

Election results

I find it very sad, that this vote just confirmed one fact… those in power who are trying to implement very necessary changes are being punished. What does that mean? It means that lying during campaigns is justified… it means, that if one wants to survive in the jungle of politics, one has to play the game. No room for simple honesty and integrity. Voters just confirmed that it is more important for politicians to elude, make empty promises and tell people what they want to hear and not what the reality is, because those strategies are what gets you elected. So often we hear that people don’t trust politicians… well… it was just proven that we don’t want them to tell us what is really going on… we keep on insisting to vote on dreams and deception. Vicious circle indeed!

Michaela Toth

Athens

Fabian Eder and ‘Greece in Bloom’

Charming and positive, but I hope he did not see sacred places of antiquity and Christian churches in remote areas surrounded by rubbish and pollution.

It is all very well enthusing about love and hospitality in, for example, Laconia, but in other areas there has been little care by local residents, farmers etc for the environment.

I have often been asked by bemused visitors why there is so much rubbish around. All I can say is «Local colour» and feel embarrased.

Rosemary Papaeliou

Can the good times truly return?

So, after a 30-year-long carnival of fun and profligacy, the people of Greece found themselves up to their necks in horrendous debt, so the only right thing to do was to enter a period of austerity, cuts and long-needed reform, but after two years they got fed up with it and the majority voted to have their good times back again.

Austerity is hard and difficult, but it is what has to follow profligacy and partying on money which you do not have. But instead Greece appears to be now on the threshold of doing the worst to its already-shattered international reputation: turning its back on the deals that it has negotiated and signed in ink.

I shudder to think where Greece is headed and what will follow.

Edward Bentley

London, UK

Thank you, Mr Eber

The man deserves a thank you for helping to show Greece is more than riots etc!

Mr Eber should be given free meals, wine etc at every port he calls at! If he calls at our port in the Ionian and we happen to recognise him, his beers and meals are on us!

Lionel Luthor

EC mission to remain in Greece permanently

This is a welcome bit of news, at least now we know we’ll have real progress and results from EU civil service employees, instead of the usual corruption and bribes we keep having to pay our crooks! Can’t wait to see a German or Frenchman sitting in the tax office where we have been ‘paying bonuses’ to crooked sods!

Lionel Luthor

One swing of the wrecking ball

Very interesting article indeed and excessively informative and realistic. While the two-party system has been dealt a strong and fatal blow, the day after with the small and scattered new parties that have virtually no plans and basis is scarier than anything that one’s mind could imagine. If no one party is able to form a government, let alone a collection of conflicting parties, the country will eventually enter a period of ungoverning which will lead to legislative vacuum that would adversely affect all facets of life in Greece and also allow time to pass wasted and unused when time is in short supply and decisions have to be made to salvage what’s left of a country hanging by a thread from a high and precarious ledge. It’s quite essential for the two-party system to have been dismantled, but the timing of this is certainly not now. Now, there’s a need for seriousness that will lead the country out of its shambles.

I am one of those who advocated Greece’s extrication from the EU and the Euro; I saw based on figures and dates that Greece could not compete in Europe within the Euro. Greece would have been much better off if it was in the EU but not in the Euro (I cite the case of the UK). But this is all wishful thinking and something that took place a decade ago which could not be undone.

Practically speaking, though, we need in Greece to find a way or formula that will allow us to have a smooth landing; one that doesn’t generate a further decline in GDP, increase unemployment and the drastic and incessant lowering of salaries. This formula had proven to be ineffective and lacking in imagination. Greece is a special case within Europe and should be dealt with with different methods. The troika had appointed some accountants who lack imagination and could only go by the book to solve a problem. These people, of whom I am one, are not appropriate to prescribe a panacea for Greece. They are catastrophic and most of the time are wrong in their judgment. I had been there many times and witnessed first hand their blunders and lack of professionalism. They claim to be working, but in essence are just wandering, asking questions and prescribing the wrong medicine based on data which is not reliable to start with. They are an empty drum. What Greece needs at this time is wise men and women who could fix its ship which has not sunk as yet. The chances of success would be more than double if the men and women of Greece rose to the challenge and did what’s right.

Here in Greece, we have the best country in the world, the best weather, highly educated people and all the means for excelling. So, let us stop moaning and work for the Greece that we all look up to.

John Elka