|
|
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 13-02-01
CONTENTS
[01] SYRIZA leader outlines 'revival plan' for Greece
[01] SYRIZA leader outlines 'revival plan' for Greece
AMNA--Greek main opposition SYRIZA is asking for a substantial write-off
of the nominal value of Greece's accumulated public debt and a moratorium
on the servicing of the debt, so that the money that will be saved may
be channeled directly to the effort for recovery of the economy, that
amortization payments will not stifle economic recovery at its birth, and
a recapitalization of the banks without the relevant funds being included
in the state debt, SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras said in an article in
the French newspaper "Le Monde Diplomatique" appearing on Friday.
Outlining his plan for Greece's revival, in an article titled "The
future of Greece and Europe", Tsipras said that the measures should
be accompanied by progressive, structural reforms aimed at a more
just distribution of the wealth, and added that overcoming the crisis
presupposes a break with the country's past that caused it. It also
presupposes the consolidation of social justice, equality before the law,
transparency, "in one word, democracy", stressing that such a plan can be
applied only by a political party that is independent of the financial
oligarchy that holds the state hostage, and of the state-dependent
businessmen, the colluders and tax-exempt shipowners and bankrupt bankers.
According to Tsipras, the crisis upset the cost-benefit ratio, and
Berlin reacted by exporting the austerity recipe, thus establishing
social polarization internally in the member states of the EU south
and economic tension inside the eurozone itself, creating an axis
of a "creditor North-debtor South" resulting from a self-serving,
for the North, new distribution of labor, with the South specializing
in labor-intensive products and services with low wages and the North
engaging in a competitiveness race of high quality and innovation with
a low unit production cost and high remuneration.amna
He observed that Federation of German Industry (BDI) president Hans-Peter
Keitel's proposal, in a recent interview with Der Spiegel Online,
that all of Greece should become a "Special Economic Zone" in the euro
zone is indicative of the real target of the Memorandum which, he said,
is being intensified and extended, at least to 2020, despite the fact
that it has failed resoundingly as a fiscal recipe, as all of Europe now
acknowledges and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admits. For its
inspirers, however, the Memorandum has succeeded as a means of imposing
international economic control on Greece and downgrading it into a debt
colony of the eurozone, Tsipras continued.
In that light, he reiterated that annulment of the Memorandum is a
prerequisite for Greece's exit from the crisis. In any case, he added,
one must look directly at the real causes of the economic crisis in
Greece, given that the substantive and major waste of public monies
remains untouched today.amna
A SYRIZA government seeks a moratorium on servicing of the debt in order
to change Greece. Without that, any attempt at a sustainable fiscal
streamlining would be reminiscent of Sisyphus, only this time the drama
will not concern only Ancient Corinth, but all of Europe, Tsipras warned.
|