Our responsibility to vote ‘NO’ in the Greek referendum
Theodoros Karyotis, Roar, July 2, 2015
The decision of the Greek government, late last Friday, to put the proposals of the creditors to referendum caught by surprise even those who, from a grassroots perspective, have been fighting against the murderous austerity in Greece in recent years. After all, the negotiations had just come to yet another impasse, the bailout program was coming to an end, and the institutions previously known as the “Troika” had once more rejected the proposal of the Greek government to transfer the cost of the debt crisis to the well-off, demanding instead more sacrifices on behalf of the disadvantaged: further reductions in wages and pensions, a renewed attack on our public and common goods, further decline in our labor and social rights.
All in all, the continuation of an austerity program that had not only plunged a whole society into misery, but had also demonstrably failed to achieve its own proposed goals: to make Greece’s sovereign debt more manageable and to reactivate the country’s ailing economy. To top this off, even the 47-page proposal of the Greek government, rejected as insufficient by the institutions, had all the distinguishing features of a new austerity package. The movements were therefore preparing to resist yet another memorandum; there were even preparatory meetings for the revival of the Movement of the Squares of 2011.
