Russian TV: European politicians failed to see that the single currency’s existence is in peril, trying to blame the system’s failures on individual countries, Aditya Chakrabortty, lead economics writer for The Guardian newspaper, told RT.
The result is that, at least for Greece, every feasible way of dealing with the crisis would involve the army maintaining martial law and order on the streets.
RT: We’ve recently seen elections in Greece, which have shown that the Greek people reject austerity. How long do you think this rebellion is going to go on for?
Aditya Chakrabortty: I think it has already been going on for the best part of two years, ever since the European Union and the IMF imposed the really severe program of spending cuts and reform of welfare on Greece. We’ve basically seen a country which has very quickly descended into the realms of ungovernable. What we saw simply in the last elections was about getting 70 per cent of electors voted against austerity – that is, for a party that was against austerity.
Now whether it means that they are against all spending cuts, whether it means they are against reforming labor laws, whether it means they are against changing the welfare system or whether they are against privatizing whole swathes of the national assets I don’t know. But what you do see very clearly from Greece at these elections – and I think that we’ve seen it for the best part of two years – is a kind of wholesale rejection of the program that is being imposed upon Greece.