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Greeks are ready for change, but tired of government inefficiency

22 December 2011 / 01:12:29  GRReporter
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The reason for its appearance was mainly the higher rates of public support for leftist parties. "If we add the percentages of the Communist Party, the left coalition SYRIZA and Democratic Left, the sum is 30 per cent." According to Dimitris Mavros, this sharp increase is mainly due to the outflow of supporters of PASOK to them. "Currently, 12 per cent of the Greeks support PASOK. And because it is a left-centre party, it is quite ordinary for its followers to turn to left formations. The younger and more left and revolutionary voters of PASOK have turned to SYRIZA and the people of mature age with a centre-left orientation and more conservative profile support the Democratic Left. If we look at the internal structure of PASOK, we will see that a third of the voters still support it, a third has turned to all other parties and 33 per cent belong to the group of "indeterminate vote." The Greek Left is not mature; it is still a teenager. Remember that during 2007-2008, the coalition SYRIZA had reached 17-18 per cent, which it lost later. Therefore, we cannot know how those 30 per cent of PASOK, who currently are "immigrants", would vote. Their vote will depend on the change or non-change in party leadership, on whether the country will have a stable government the next period."

But what do the Greeks think of the crisis and the outcome of it? Do they believe that failure is near and fear the probability of the country exiting the eurozone?

"Yes, fear of failure is growing. It is currently about 65-67 per cent. When we ask people whether they would prefer Greece to exit the eurozone, 80 per cent of them respond negatively. When we ask whether the decision to join the eurozone was right, the ratio of supporters and opponents is 46-46 per cent. This means that now they understand how difficult issues had to be solved differently in the period when we joined the eurozone. I am not an economist, but I do say, was the drachma - euro ratio incorrect or was there something else. Citizens understand this instinctively and say, "we had to do some things differently then." But today, when we are in the eurozone and have arranged our lives around the euro and Europe, people are startled by the thought that Greece could exit the European structures.

Here we see absolute confusion: I see the collapse coming, I do not want to exit the eurozone, but I am not sure whether it was the right decision to join it. If there is no one who could explain these things properly and make us understand very precisely, what the consequences would be of returning to the drachma, of staying in the eurozone and of the printing of money by the European Central Bank, we cannot gain a clear notion of ​​what should happen.

The first emphasis of citizens and companies as a prerequisite to have confidence in the government again and in the implementation of measures is the punishment of all those, who squander public funds. Currently, Greek society wants "blood", whether those to be blamed that things have come so far will be punished, or those responsible for today's situation will be punished. This course is a bad basis if considered as a basis for protests."

According to Dimitris Mavros, currently, the Greeks are seeking not only hope but also stability in what will happen ahead. "The PASOK government had the support of citizens, even after signing the memorandum with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, because they felt that we need to do some things for our country. Things changed when people realized that the government is not sufficiently efficient in the implementation of measures and because of this inefficiency, more and more measures are continuously applied. And it is not at all clear whether the new measures that will be applied now should not have been implemented earlier, so their response is not correct. I.e. the requirement for stability includes government stability. The second thing that people in Greece are seeking is restoring their personal and national dignity, which is now torn."

Despite the widespread opinion in international media, Dimitris Mavros is convinced that the Greeks are ready for reform. "I think the head of the action group Horst Reichenbach rightly considers that he must use the mentality of the Greeks, not to confront it. Recently, he said that whether they acted right or wrong in the past, the Greeks have made double sacrifices compared with the Portuguese and Irish to cope with the financial problems. This is a very sound approach to get the Greeks mobilized. Yes, the Greeks have realized that they have to fix some things, which they did not do properly in the past. But what they are not able to forgive is that while they are making sacrifices, the government is not efficient and this is leading to new additional austerity measures."

Tags: SocietyPoliticsPollDimitris MavrosGovernmentChange
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