Greece, corruption and recovery

Greece has passed "successfully" the test of the elections, if you look at it from the point of view of European institutions and, more generally, of North-West European governments. A center right government has been elected, joining the fledgeling forces of Nea Democratia (winner because of the 50 MP's bonus) to the beaten down PASOK and the Democratiki Aristera alibi (DA, the untainted ones if you prefer). Although they all promised to renegotiate the Memorandum of Understanding with the European Troika, they all know that it is pointless, at best providing marginal relief in terms of growth stimulation. Nevertheless, the specter of a takeover by demagogic groups like Syriza is out of the way and reforms, the most painful ones are being undertaken.

Unfortunately, the very fact that the test was successful will make the recovery even more difficult. It sounds contradictory, but it is quite logical. The parties in favor of maintaining this road to recovery are also the same corrupt phony elites that put the country there in the first place. To the exception of DA, the Ministers and more importantly the MP's in the majority are the incompetent people who have been feeding on the back of the Greek citizens since the Greek Civil War. And, very rightfully, many commentators (myself included) have pointed out the irony of letting the thieves policing and judging the robbery. Because let's be realistic here: it is grand theft we are talking about, and at a massive scale. In Greece, from the lowest level to the highest, everybody is on the take. There are very few exceptions, be it amongst higher civil servants or politicians. While generalizations are dangerous, you could be forgiven in assuming that any politician you name is probably doubling his/her already quite generous salary with bribes.

But the problem is way beyond this. Even if Greece, by some miracle, finds a sure way tomorrow towards growth and economic recovery, its budget and financial structure is mined by a major issue: there is no respect for the rule of law. In fact, when you look at it, even superficially, Greece has the means to balance its budget and recover enough taxes and State income to pay for decent government expenses. All it needs to do (easier said than done) is to enforce and apply its own laws. It needs everyone, from the simplest citizen to the bigger multinational business to pay taxes, it needs people to follow the rules and be fined or prosecuted if they don't and it needs everyone to stop stealing from the State. Because while stealing from the State, while it looks like a victimless crime, is in fact a crime against oneself and everyone else. Greeks simply don't understand this.

The illusion is that only fat cats and politicians steal, take bribes and tax evade. But the sad truth is that everyone does. Worse, even "honest people" simply have no respect for the rule of law. It begins with the simplest things: traffic rules, receipts in small transactions, and so on. No law is respected and no one enforces them. Cops rarely give tickets and never check traffic. As a result, not only they don't get money from fines, but they are not respected either. And of course, the Greek traffic is extremely deadly, with numerous accidents and severe consequences. So it is true that Greece needs to stop the tax evasion of its super-rich, the thieves living in their Filoteia and Kifissia villas, surrounded by barb wires and armed private guards. But it is also true that it is the entire mentality of a country which needs to change, from the taxi driver to the hair dresser to the cop to the city hall employee to the Prime Minister. Without this, Greece will remain the third world country it is, on par with Morocco for corruption and Yemen for ease of creating a business.

Greece can be a rich country, as it has the resources and the infrastructure to sustain itself easily. All it needs is to switch to modernity, not by creating more laws but by applying them and by switching on the very mind of the citizens. It is going to be a long process and a painful one. I wonder when it will start...
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Elections in Sun land

Unless you have lived under a stone for the last five years, you would know that there were elections in Greece to vote a new Parliament in. And you might know that it was the second time in a month, due to the inability of the politicians to work together for the good of the nation to form a new government.

This second round meant that the winner would be nearly automatically ensured to be able to get a majority or at least to build a coalition with only one other party. Indeed, the winner gets a bonus of 50 seats in the Assembly of 300 representatives, usually enough to make the difference. Here are the final results in English.

In this case, and while the winner, conservative Nea Democratia (ND), did clinch a relative majority, even these 50 seats were not enough and it will have to build a coalition (129 seats < 151). Nothing too bad, mind you, as the only other party which clearly announced it could work with ND was "socialist" PASOK who got enough seats to complete a solid majority (33 seats + 129 = 162 > 151). The self declared opposition party, SYRIZA, a coalition of no-communists, socialists and anarchy-unionists, got 71 seats. But the legitimacy of such a majority is extremely low. If one looks at the percentage of expressed votes, the 162 seats represent in fact 41.94% of the voices. SYRIZA would have an easy claim that, allied with parties opposed to the ND and PASOK policy, they represent more of the people. Legitimacy is a tricky thing in a democracy. As my old Constitutional Law teacher used to say, ultimate power is not in the majority in an election but in the street violence that the people can unleash if they don't feel represented.

So the real strength of ND will be its ability to attract the support (at least in the Parliament if not in the government) of another ally, in order to get this badly lacking legitimacy. ND and PASOK asked SYRIZA to join, but its leader, Alexis Tsipras, is too clever for Greece's own good and refused flatly. He knows that his popularity is only linked to his new boyish face and empty promises. If he joins the majority, he will disappear politically. So Antonis Samaras and Evangelos Venizelos (the ND and PASOK leaders respectively) will have to cut a deal with another party or two. The most obvious candidate is the smaller Democratiki Aristera (Democratic Left), a moderate party of progressive leaning technocrats. Its leader, Fotis Kouvelis, previously rejected such a deal, but concessions by ND and PASOK and opening by German negotiators could make him change his mind. Same is true for Anexartitoi Ellines (Independant Greeks), an ultra-conservative group of Church and Fatherland types.

None of these two parties got enough votes to help the future government cross the 50% votes legitimacy threshold. But, if both join, this threshold would be passed. Such a scenario is highly unlikely. To be honest, the presence of any of the two is very likely to prevent the other from joining as their ideologies are diametrically opposed. There is only so much you can ask for the good of the country...

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Politics in Greece

It is very difficult to understand Greece with North-West Europe references. Not that Greece is particularly "exotic" or "alien", but mostly because it has a rather troubled recent History that most foreigners or visiting tourists don't know well (and I was one of these poorly informed people). The political landscape in Greece used to be rather simple, at least seen from the outside, opposing since 1974 conservatives (Nea Democratia) to socialists (PASOK). Fringe smaller parties also existed, such as populist right wing LAOS (a Church and fatherland resurgence of older parties) or the older Communist KKE (pronounce koeh-koeh-A). But they never were in a position to challenge the duopoly of the two party system and the fact is that most current and numerous parties in Greece did not exist under their current form only 10 years ago.

Most of this is linked to the fact that Greece, from 1967 to 1974, was under the regime of conservative putschist colonels. Both conservative and socialist parties were created as a reaction to this regime and the communist KKE (which had been clandestine since the end of the Second World War) was only legalized at this time too. This has had a profound influence on the way Greek citizens view authority, political parties and ideologies. Parties were identified, consciously or not, in relation to their relationship with the colonels' junta (as it is called in Greece) and ideologies, behaviors, political myths and realities are also shaped by the trauma of the brutal dictature. Nationalist parties are often associated to this regime and illegal or damaging activities of leftist ones are often considered less negatively, because of their resistance to it.

All this changed in the last 10 to 5 years, and even more with the recent economic crisis. The political system has suddenly exploded, ending the dominance of the two party system. New players in the political field include radical left Syriza, Democratic Left (Aristera), Golden Dawn (neo-nazis), the ecologist Green and LAOS (Religious Nationalists). Most of these parties embody in fact, a certain modernity in the Greek system, for the better and for the worst. Indeed, all these new parties reflect issues and ideas that are found now in most other democracies, but which were prevented from expressing themselves by the two-party system. I use this term on purpose, as this "system" was not in any way a product of the Constitution of the IIIrd Hellenic Republic, but because it was, in my opinion a perversion of it. In other terms, both conservative and socialist put in place a strong nepotism and clientele system, corrupting the Greek democracy and effectively preventing the occurrence of political and ideological alternative. Of course, one should avoid excessive generalisation, and both parties certainly had honest members. But the leadership of these parties clearly and obviously maintained their power by way of services against votes and money against services. To get anything done in Greece (public or private) you would need a political support in one of these two parties. To a certain extent, this is still true today.

But the emergence and rise of other political and ideological offer, as well as the systematic failure by both traditional parties to handle the economic crisis, making it even worse, has created the current political quagmire. No party at the moment can claim any kind of majority. But more importantly, the separation between the parties no longer reflect the right or left paradigm but also the separation between old school politics and the new ways. The issue is as much generational as it is ideological. Hence the impossibility to build any coalition between parties which should, from an external point of view, be logical allies. It goes against the mentality of the politician involved but also against years of History. They are unable to handle the crisis or give coordinated answer to Greece's problems simply because there is no structure any more in Greece politics.
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Greece at last or new beginning

After nine months of letting this blog pretty much slowly die, I have decided that my personal circumstances were justifying a relaunch. Due to private reasons, I just relocated to Greece, in Nea Ionia (Attika). Many friends and relative have been a bit shocked or at least surprised by this decision, considering that Greece is going currently through quite difficult times. The country is experimenting a dreadful economic crisis, while the political crisis is raging at the same time. I thought it would be interesting for readers to hear from me what it means to live this daily.

It has definitely a very strong link to the main topic of this blog, as, if you want to believe most media, Greece issues are now European ones and the solutions and problems we are experimenting here are dealt with at the European level. More generally, it seems to me and many other observers that the crisis which is so acutely felt here is also a symptom of the more general problems that Europa is currently experiencing. It can be seen through the local prism of the budget and debt issue, but it can also be described as a growth crisis of the European concept. Solidarity, economic rationality, democracy, federalism and nationalism are all being tested simultaneously and how we (citizens) are going to answer this is going to determine the future of this continent, not just the price of bread in Athens.
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Happy 2012

Happy New Year! OK, it is horribly late... But I wish you all a pleasant new year 2012. I especially wish it to be better than 2011, which was an execrable year in so many ways.

New year means new good resolutions. This apple is there as a symbol of sound(er) eating and healthy diet...

Enjoy!
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Two Party System

Democracy (as understood in the Western concept of the word) has existed in all kinds of ways and institutional constructions. All of these constructions have included the idea that one of the fundamental rights of the citizens was to organize themselves in political structures conveniently called "parties". Gathering of people interested in the same ideas, as well as vehicles for the personal ambitions of some, parties have always been a fixture of democracy (and even of many non-democratic regimes). The European institutions recognized this too and parties exist at the European level, even though they have some difficulty to be recognized by the EU polity.

This said, there are fundamental differences between the party set up in the different democratic countries. In some countries, they are simple associations of citizens, with little more difference with a sport club than their objectives. In others, they are an integral part of the institutions, with a status well apart from other groups of citizens. Another major distinction between party systems is simply their number in a a given country. Some countries have essentially a two party system (to simplify, 'left vs. right"), some have a three party one and many if not most have a multiple party system. It would be extremely disingenuous to pretend that these difference have no effect on the political institutions and the political life of a country. On the contrary, these differences actually contribute to define the institutions and are in turn defined by them. But, unlike the constitution of a country, the party set up is rarely or never fixed. This can have tremendous and unexpected effects.

Let's take a couple of example. The USA, for instance, have a two party system, very rigid and highly integrated in the country's institutions. Parties there are in no way ordinary associations, but there is simply little political life outside of the Republican and Democrat parties. The United Kingdom recently evolved from a quasi two party system to a theoretical three party one. Although we could argue that the UKIP is a 4th player, it weighs too little in the country's institutions to seriously threaten the Tories, Labour and LibDem hold on power. France, Germany or the Netherlands are all multiple party set up, at least to a point. While the weight of the different Dutch parties can be reasonably considered as truly variable, France and Germany both have a very dominant right and left parties (UMP and PS in France, CDU-CSU and SPD for Germany). But even in France and Germany, smaller parties can and do actually play a role, would it only be the "king maker" one between the dominant right and left formations.

It is interesting to see that the current massive global crisis which has struck the Western world has affected the political life of these countries very differently, depending on their party set up. Netherlands has reacted to the crisis in a fairly classic way. The balance between the 15 various parties has been strongly modified, but in the end the power didn't change hands much. The crisis first brought a centre government (Labour, Christian Democrats and Conservative), then a slight sway to the right (Christian Democrats, Conservative and National-Populists) as electors blamed the first post-crisis coalition for its inefficiency. In general, it was a typical answer of a multi-polar system: it was easy to adapt because the multiple choices meant mutilple solution and easy adaptation to the new reality. The down side of this greater adaptability of course is that it gave access to power to a fringe party. This can typically not happen in a two or three party system.

In the USA, the strength or rather sheer weight of the two parties is so huge that a crisis can only make the power change from one party to the other. The crisis (amongst other factors) contributed to Obama's victory and did put the Democrats in power. However, their relative inability to tackle problems quickly and the fact that the crisis lasted longer than they thought did bring Republicans a victory in the House after only two years. It is fairly clear for an external observer that the US bipolar system has the advantage of stability. But it is also fairly obvious that it suffers greatly, as a downside, of its rigidity. Outside of the two main parties, there is no room for political power. One can have influence without them, but not exercise power. It also means that the US institutional system has too much inertia and is unable to give a speedy and adequate answer to a major crisis. The result of this is what we can observe on our TV screens: besides the Republican and Democrat parties, citizens organize themselves in a series of alternatives. Originally, the Libertarian organisation had this role, but we now see also the Tea Party, the Occupy Wall Street organisation, the Coffee Party, and so on. Obviously, the American institutions being what they are, these organisations can only exist in reference and interdependence with the two traditional parties. They are opposed to them, yet they are forced to ally with them to exist in the political landscape and not only in the streets.

While both set up have their advantages and disadvantages, I have to say that I find the US system extremely dangerous. When, in a democratic society, citizens feel so estranged towards traditional politic organisations that they have to get down to the streets to get heard, something can go very wrong. Democracy's principle is to give legitimacy to the government by having the citizens feel represented by it. The two party system inadequation, rigidity and slow answer to crisis put this democratic basis into jeopardy.
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European solidarity?

Greece, the land where democracy was invented, entered the European Union in 1981. While we Europeans are all confronted to the worst existential crisis since the Rome treaty, Greece has taken the brunt of it. I am using the word "existential" on purpose, to avoid "economic". Indeed, I want to prove, by use of the Greek example, that the crisis we are currently experiencing is only economic in its consequences. It is, in my opinion, before anything else a political crisis of solidarity. To state the obvious, it is by far not just a European crisis, but the actual chain of events unravelling in Europe during this crisis is beyond any doubt a European specificity and a threat to the existence of our regional organisation.

There are clearly several levels to the catastrophic chain of events which began with the sub-prime crash in 2008, the banking failures, the companies bankruptcies, the "bear" stock markets, the currency crisis and now the defaulting countries. There is an international crisis of the deregulated markets, obviously. It was not sop much a failure of capitalism, as was written by some leftist journalists, but a perversion of its mechanisms. Capitalism is a system which can be extremely efficient if two factors are present: a high level of information of the economic agents and a very low level of competition distortion. The global level of the crisis came precisely from a complete absence of both these factors. Agents began trading products where they had no visibility at all, or even where they were purposefully and massively misled. In other words, there was a massive fraud scam going on at the global level. But instead of compensating the lack of (government) regulation by an increased competition, these agents (banks, funds, traders, insurance companies and notation agencies) cooperated and colluded to avoid their individual demise. This led to their failure en masse and the need for the governments to rescue several of them (or their victims) with taxpayer money. Here already, we see that the origin of the crisis was one of fraud, essentially, a criminal enterprise, with economic consequences and all too human victims.

However, the global level crisis was followed by a local or country level one. Several of the countries which had to "bail out" financial institutions found themselves unable to meet their own obligations. This happened because they had to cover extraordinary expenses to recapitalize these financial institutions and because the economic crisis at the global level reduced at the same time their fiscal income. Extreme examples of such crisis include countries which had relatively sound budgetary principles such as Iceland, Portugal or Ireland, but also ones which did not. Greece is currently the archetypal example of such countries. Like France, the USA or Italy, its budgets were not balanced before the crisis. Unlike France and Italy, after the crisis they became unsustainable, because the weight of the public debt interests could not reasonably be covered by the country taxes. Like Mexico or Brazil in the 80's, Greece became technically insolvent.

Unlike these countries, the Greek government had consistently lied about it. The previous PASOK government had lied about its budget deficit before the country adhesion to the Eurozone, the Nea Democratia government kept lying about it after it came to power. To the credit of the current PASOK government, it disclosed the extent of the countries woes when it came to power in 2009. Unfortunately, it was already too late for any realistic local salvage plan. Greece has a poorly efficient public sector, an incredibly expensive military (second only to the USA in terms of budget to GDP ratio and first in NATO in terms of enlisted men and women in the army). It has way too many nationalized companies and not enough free competition. Its fiscal efficiency is poor, to say the least, with the richest people paying too little taxes (or evading them all together). Last but not least, the Church weighs enormously in political affairs without contributing to the economy.

A regional or international solution had to be found. Because of its membership in the European Union and its participation in the Euro single currency, the Greek problem quickly became a European problem. The Greek debt was a Euro debt and its crisis, by weakening the Euro, soon threatened to spread like a contagious disease. Namely, other European countries with the same currency and similar budget issues could face the same reluctance from lenders to give them any credit. And there lies precisely my point. Notation agencies and international banks did treat (to a certain extent) Europe as a apart entity. With some reason, they calculated that the European countries could not ignore the Greek issue (or the similar Portuguese and Irish ones). European banks had lent vast amounts to Greece, and so had sovereign entities. A Greek default would weaken or even threaten them. By their assessments and notations, they clearly sent the message that they expected a regional answer to a potentially regional problem. Although they had themselves some responsibility in the problem (contributing to aggravate it), it can not be denied that they had a point. Greece and the other European Union member states are linked by several treaties and by their common institutions. They share a money and their economies, via the common market are integrated in a very extensive way.

Yet, it is not so much an economic answer that these lenders wanted to see. It was a political one. In petto, this was a test of political will, of institutional resilience and (for some) of statesmanship. And it is, I think, stating the obvious again to write that this test was lamentably failed. While some, like Jean-Claude Juncker or Jean-Claude Trichet, did raise to meet the challenge where and when they could, most of the "usual suspects" showed a total lack of political sense. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, but also for instance the Slovakian and Finish leaders (Iveta Radicova and Jyriki Katainen respectively), did not rise to show European leadership. They cringed and cowered on national issues, nationalistic ones even. Europe, as an idea as well as an institutional construction, is based on solidarity. Until 2008, it never had to face any substantial crisis. The Cold War never turned hot. The fall of the Berlin wall was more an opportunity than a crisis. The Bush led "War on Terror" (tm) always was an American thing, even if the Labour UK government demonstrated high levels of servility in it. None of these issues was a true crisis, because none of them threatened the livelihood of the European citizens. Even the defeat of the European constitutional referendum was mostly a technocratic issue. While citizens were consulted and generally rebelled against it, it did not affect them enough to even take the pain of trying to understand it or vote for anything else than local political reflex.

But nowadays, the crisis is well there. The refusal from international lenders to give sustainable interest rates to Greece and now other EU countries is actually threatening the life of millions of European citizens. And yet, the European answer has oscillated between hesitations and chauvinism. Europe, understood as a collective of member-states, has spectacularly failed the first serious test that was presented to it. Even if Greece is saved (and it will, sooner or later, but at which cost?), the current European institutional "house" is dying. It is dying from the poison that its own lack of solidarity is producing.

It might take a while, but the lessons of this bitter event have to be taken. The faster the better. It is not realistic to expect a vague coalition of member-states to present anything structured in answer to a regional or international crisis. It is not realistic to expect a lone country to play the role of scapegoat for the failures of international organisations, even if this country's government clearly dug its own grave. It is even less realistic to expect citizens to stay still or even to have a rational answer to all this. It might be time to build actual institutions to give Europe the political reactivity that its economic sheer mass requires. We can't continue to have such a massive truck with so many drivers and so little direction. Europe needs political leadership supported by democratic legitimacy and it needs it now. It is not time for less Europe, it is time for a stronger and faster one. Now is the time...
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Graphic changes

This week, i have decided to work on my blog again. I am happy to see that Blogger added all kinds of new features. One of the most important for me is the possibility to add fixed pages to it (like with WordPress). This way, I don't need to maintain two different sites any more (the old fixed one and the blog). So from now on, you will be able to discover my photography work on display by clicking in the dedicated page. My poetry work is now also available on a fixed page. At the moment there is nothing really new (if you already knew my work, at least). But I will add up more stuff there soon.

I have also cleaned up the links and most of the surrounding "non core" stuff. So most links should now work and most of them still be relevant. It was badly needed, after so many of them have disappeared, been arrested or simply abandoned the public debate by becoming "invitation only" blogs (another word for the sad victory of repressive regimes on free press).

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Google+

Dear readers,

I discovered Google+ a couple of days ago, thanks to my good friend Draz. I have to say that I am quite impressed by Page's team work on this. I know, one should not compare it to Facebook, because it was not intended to compete with it. Yeah, right...

It does a lot of stuff that Facebook does not do too well, or similar stuff but slightly better. To be completely honest, it also does a lot of stuff less good than FB: refreshing is a bit random, some elements don't really display too well and posts with too many comments will take ages to load. But this is fairly acceptable for a service which just began and it got most of its functionality right from the start.

Now where Google+ shines and FB doesn't is, as many have already written, in the handling of privacy and sharing. The "Circles" that Google+ use are a brilliant system. It is slick, it works and these circles are not mutually exclusive. So you can play nicely "Set Theory" style with your contact list. Indeed, "Circles" are just the social avatars of mathematical sets. Some are there already when you sign up (Family, Friends, Acquaintances, etc.), but you can create more. So, for instance, I created one circle for my ex-colleagues, one for my current employer and one for each of my hobbies. But some of the people I have put in these four sets are also in my friends set or my acquaintances set. This gives me a near infinity of options to share information with whomever I want and with whichever precision I require.

I still think some stuff needs improvement. For instance, while the interface is very slick and easy to use, I think that post + comments still take too much space on my screen. This makes having an overview of the recent posts a bit uneasy. There also doesn't seem to be much in terms of business related areas. But I am sure it will come at the time they chose right... If I may present a suggestion to the Google+ team, I think they should concentrate on allowing more integration by the users of their own existing Google content in Google+. I am thinking of Blogger posts, Google Docs, Google Calendar events and so on. Speaking about Events, I believe it is the major way to go. No free social platform (except Meetup) ever got this right. If Google+ manages to get Event handling in a decent way, they will simply take over the social scene.

All in all, I am favourably impressed. I noticed that my time on Google+ is already largely surpassing my time on Facebook or LinkedIn. I doubt it will replace these any time soon, but it completes them nicely and I have no doubt that Google has created a very successful (not so) new social platform.
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