by Eze Eluchie
From the night of the 25th of January 2015 when the leftist Syriza Party, for the time in its history, won the Parliamentary elections in Greece in a landslide victory, garnering 149 out of the 300 seats in the parliament, it was clear to close watchers of European politics and Euro-skeptics alike, that the terrain would not be as stable as touted and that the boat was about to be rocked.
And rock the boat the Syriza leadership sure did.
Faced with the debilitating effects of ruinous ‘debt relief’ conditions set by the Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and other Breton Woods institutions, the Greeks, were in the buildup to the 2015 parliamentary elections desirous to support whosoever promised them an alternative. Juicy alternatives which Syriza offered: promising amongst other goodies, an end to ‘the vicious circle of austerity’, a renegotiation of the entire bailout package, increased public expenditure on social services.
To up the stakes in its ‘confrontation’ with the Troika and its appendages, soon after it assumed office, the Syriza party under the leadership of new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, raised the specter of repayment of over 279 Billion Euro in reparation for damages occasioned to Greece by the power house of Europe, Germany, resulting from losses and damages suffered during World War II. The tell-tale look and reaction Prime Minister Tsipras got from the 'powers that be' over these demands was quite suggestive of impending consequences.
In a nutshell, Syriza was promising direct frontal confrontation with the almighty Trioka - a significant component of what I will hereafter refer to as 'The Establishment'.
The prospect of Greece defaulting on its debts to the ‘international community’ and a likely domino effect of such default on other equally heavily indebted states in Europe and beyond, and the probability of a Greek exit (dubbed ‘grexit’) from the Euro, sent palpable shivers down the spineof the establishment.
Similar threats of this nature, from other climes, had been met with very drastic repercussions, attracting international ‘economic and socio-cultural’ sanctions, Security Council and or International Criminal Court investigations into ‘human right abuses’, sundry spurious allegations of all manners of crimes, and ultimately regime change – this ultimate solution could either be in the form of a coup d’etat or outright assassinations of identified heads of the Government which had dared to challenge the ‘world order’.
Being alarmist or a conspiracy theorist? Certainly not!
Greece’s Alexis Tsipras has not been the first populist leader to insist on ditching debt repayment agreements and threaten to damn the consequences of such action. Across Africa, history is littered with the carcasses of Heads of Governments, who in realization of the dire consequences of a vicious circle of indebtedness to the Establishment on their populations, and dared insinuate, suggest or hint at non-compliance with the crippling debt repayment conditions which served to pauperize domestic populations, destroy societal norms and fabrics and leave an entire people stripped of their humanity under the guise of ‘open markets’ and ‘privatization’ scams.
The quintessential example of an African heads of Government-victim of the audacity to dare the Establishment was Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara. When this young revolutionary military officer who headed the Government of Burkina Faso had, in an address to the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 1987, had advised that a clear way to rid African States of the burden of foreign debts was to simply refuse to pay those debts and become self reliant, living on what each country was able to produce and enhance trade relationships amongst African States. In Col. Sankara’s words, "Either we resist collectively and refuse categorically to repay the debt, or we are not able to do this, one by one, isolated, we will suffer death". Most discerning observers had known that Sankara's bold speech had all the making of a valedictory address. Three months after Thomas Sankara’s famous address at the OAU meet in Ethiopia, he was killed in a military insurrection spare-headed by his erstwhile deputy, Blaise Campore , who expectedly announced in his inaugural address that Burkina Faso would abide by all its foreign debt obligations.
Others examples abound. Those who dared demand debt cancellation and or those who dared ask for reparations: I will leave readers to add their victims to this list.
The question that readily comes to the fore is: If Greece’s Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras had been the head of government of an African country, and he dared state the positions he has repeatedly held with regards to debt repayment and reparations, would he still be in office by now? Would there have been a coup by some renegade soldiers by now, during which the Prime Minister would have been liquidated? Would a successful assassination have been executed by now? My intuition tells me that the answers to the questions raised above are all in the affirmative!
If Prime Minister Tsipras continues in the line he is towing, the options of silence may yet be explored by the 'powers that be'.
Picture: late Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) and Alexis Tsipras (Greece)
