Greek local elections remove Government's mandate

I watched open-mouthed as Bloomberg TV reported first thing on Monday morning of this week that the Sunday local elections in Greece were a ringing endorsement for the austerity programme and the EU/IMF failing rescue package. Sure enough the true result is now slowly becoming clearer, starting with this comment in The Guardian, which concludes as follows: Abstaining or spoiling the ballot in a highly politicised country is a political act of great consequence which leaves the government with no mandate to continue with its measures. It is the Greek equivalent to the Argentinian chant "que sa vayan todos" ("you should all go") addressed to the elites that had led the country to bankruptcy in December 2001.

The IMF-EU authored chronicle of an economic death foretold will move to its end game with the banks' plenipotentiaries signing the death certificate of the welfare state, but popular resistance is now likely to move up a gear. Strikes, demonstrations and social unrest will decide the future of the country in the coming months. The Greeks have a proud record of resistance against foreign and local dominations. They now need new ideas, people and convergences, if a new politics is to rise from the current debacle. In this direction the wider left, the only political group not involved in the debt and corruption crises, has a major role to play.