Fires burn and Elections are coming in Greece

international | anti-capitalism | news report Thursday September 06, 2007 16:08 by MichaelY - per cap

Asymmetric threats and other nonsense

On Aug, 16th, the Greek Government of the right-of-centre New Democracy Party announced that the country will have early national elections on Sept. 16th. This call, six months before the end of the Government’s 4-year tenure, took almost everybody by surprise.

The Victory statue in Ancient Olympia - no words necessary

Commentators argued that the Government wanted to avoid of having to confront its responsibilities arising out of an independent judicial review blaming Government Ministers for hundreds of millions of € that had ‘disappeared’ from a number of pension funds. Others put forward the view that the Government wanted elections before presenting its budget for 2007-08, so as to avoid any backlash as a result of the planned cutbacks and increased taxation.

Then came the deadly fires…..nobody had predicted this calamity!

The Government, seriously on the back foot, put forward or acquiesced with a number of scenarios so as to ‘explain away’ this particular development:

- The PM Karamanlis spoke of an “asymmetric threat” (seriously!!). This was understood to mean something ‘out of the ordinary’ and not easily explainable. A few newspapers spoke of Martians, UFOs and a possible combination of the former with Turkish or Albanian intelligence services.
- A more political scenario argued that the fires were the result of US/CIA machinations so as to get back to the ND Government which had only a few days earlier signed an oil and natural gas agreement with the Russians – ignoring American ‘advice’!
- According to the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ms Bakoyianni, the fires were the work of extreme left wing anarchist/autonomist currents, wanting to spread confusion a few days before the elections.
- The second in command in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, George Kassimis, echoing his boss, argued that the fires were the “..work of dark forces attempting to destabilise the country”!!

However, very few took notice of a very detailed statement and a satellite map, worked out through the collaboration of the Italian Telespazio and the Greek MET company HellasSAT that put the blame not only for the deadly fires that burnt through the entire Mediterranean area from the Canaries to southern Turkey, but also the deadly floods from the UK to Germany, Poland, Hungary and Serbia to CLIMATE CHANGE !! Symmetrically!

A burning question that the Greek Government, along with almost all EU Gvts, the Irish Government and the Bush Administration have done very little about.

September 16th is only a few days away. Some very recent polls indicate that public feeling in Greece is moving away from the bipolar centre-right/centre left parties that governed Greece since the fall of the military in 1973……and towards the smaller left wing organisations. Personally, I think it is a bit early to arrive at hard and fast conclusions, The two monsters of New Democracy and PASOK will do their utmost to find ways to survive. They will manipulate the pain and tears of those who lost loved ones, the many many more who lost properties, farms, animals…they will buy consciences with hot money and even hotter promises.

There are other options. But that perhaps would be the subject of another text.
Opinions and debate welcome.