General Election Greece – Have We Already Seen The Last One?

Since Papademos took over the country as an unlected Prime Minster the talk of a general election has been clouded in doubt.

Dates were touted for February or March 2012 but whenever these dates have been given in the media it has always been with the proviso that the dates were flexible.

Today it has come out that April is the latest date for elections in Greece.

Venizelos shows that despite the change of Prime Minister he is as clueless as ever, Athens News has quoted him

“The country is in tragic state,” Venizelos said

The only thing in a tragic state in Greece is the government, and the government is dragging down the private economy.

You have to ask why the political leaders want to push the dates of elections into the future.

The line in the media is that they need the time to push through reforms.

Why exactly the government cannot push through the reforms with a democratic government is not given.

Of course the answer is obvious.

The proposed reforms in Greece are deeply unpopular and their feasibility would be in doubt if the politicians had to bear in mind the wants of the electorate before they voted for the reforms.

This is a text-book example of dictatorship.

The government cannot pass the reforms it needs to because of popular resistance so instead of listening to the electorate, the Greek political leaders have decided it is acceptable to eliminate the democratic process while the undemocratic changes are carried out.

It is said by Greek politicians that they cannot let the Greek population sign their own death warrant or things along these lines regards to the decisions people want to take.

This shows that the ruling class of Greece have completely lost sight of what democracy is.

Democracy is supposed to be the wishes of the people. The politicians are supposed to represent the wants of the people who voted for them even if they do not believe in the things that the electorate is asking for. That is their job.

In Greece, the people now accept that it is okay for politicians to act against their wishes.

It has taken a while to get to this point. Years of political corruption and economic mismanagement of the economy has slowly eroded the Greeks belief in democracy until it has reached the point where we are today.

Today we have a country ready to accept dictatorship, maybe not in the Greek 70s Juntas kind of dictatorship, but a dictatorship nonetheless.

With regards to general election in Greece in 2012.

It seems the current Papademos regime clearly wants to do something while they are in power.

This thing they want to achieve could be setting the ground work to make it acceptable not to have elections in 2012.

Or the extra time the Papademos regime wants is to put the final nails in the coffin of the Greek economy.

If Papademos is playing for more time in power there are 2 obvious ways he could achieve this.

The first is to improve the Greek economy by the banks lending again. This would be a shining example to all other indebted countries that things can improve if the banks control the economy.

Greece is the first country to have a banker as Prime Minister, the bankers have to show it is a positive thing for the people if they want to install bankers in other European countries.

It is hard for me to see why the bankers need their man as Prime Minister to control the economy. The economy is controlled by the bankers already, it is hard for me to see what they will gain from having a Prime Minister on their side.

With regards to the private sector banks really have this under control already.

Government borrowing is largely already in the control of the banks.

So what do they gain by having their man as Prime Minister?

The only thing the bankers do not really have a handle on in a democratic government is the debt repayments.

Without banker involvement Greece could simply not carry on with its current debt burden and would have arguably defaulted by now meaning huge losses for the banks.

The picture in Greece however is the bankers putting systems in place which keep the government on life support while the bankers extract money from the population.

That is the only logical motive that I can see.

So playing for more time, Papademos, as a banker, could have the banks start lending again and say “look what bankers can do, we need power for longer”. If people are gullible or weak enough to go with this train of thought then the foundations could be put in place whereby the prime minister of a country is not effected by elections and only “politicians” are voted in or out.

On the other hand some sort of crisis could be initiated whereby Papademos says “we cannot have elections in these volatile times, we need power for longer”

Knowing the malleability of Greek politicians I cannot see them resisting this train of thought, they have done nothing over the past 3 years to push back against the tax increases.

And as I have been saying from the start of the Greek crisis, a Greek default would not have been anywhere near as bad as any other default in history.

For Papademos to try to extend his term with a crisis, it will have to be artificially created crisis because reality would really not be that bad.

When I started writing this article I believed there was a possibility that Papademos could improve the economy in Greece but having thought through the situation while writing this article I think an artificially created crisis is now the more likely option, with perhaps a brief pickup prior to the created  crisis.

Whatever Papademos’s plan, he has to implement it in the next few weeks. Greek politicians are getting restless and their calls for elections are sure to get louder and louder.

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