In the five months that intervened since then, we became the first government that dared raise its voice, speaking on behalf of the people, saying NO to the damaging irrationality of our extend-and-pretend ‘Bailout Program’.
We
- spread the word that the Greek ‘bailouts’ were exercises whose purpose was intentionally to transfer private losses onto the shoulders of the weakest Greeks, before being transferred to other European taxpayers
- articulated, for the first time in the Eurogroup, an economic argument to which there was no credible response
- put forward moderate, technically feasible proposals that would remove the need for further ‘bailouts’
- confined the troika to its Brussels’ lair
- internationalised Greece’s humanitarian crisis and its roots in intentionally recessionary policies
- spread hope beyond Greece’s borders that democracy can breathe within a monetary union hitherto dominated by fear.
- To humiliate our government by forcing us to succumb to stringent austerity, and
- To drag us into an agreement that offers no firm commitment to a sensible, well-defined debt restructure