Greece: Samaras’ mother of all battles against the internal occupation army
16/06/2013 - 10:27am
The solidarity of public broadcasters throughout Europe to the Greek public television ERT, is amazing. ERT was shut down last week by a unilateral decision of the Greek Prime Minister, leader of a tri-partite coalition, Antonis Samaras.
From the Greek perspective, in closing down ERT Samaras certainly violated a number of Greek written and unwritten laws and put in jeopardy the highly sensitive government coalition. Yet, in the various opinion polls on the matter made immediately after the fact, Greeks were approving the decision of Samaras by 80%. In later polls, after the big show put up by the trade unions and the opposition parties the percentage changed followed by suspicions of manipulations. Thus, no matter what the various written and unwritten laws say, politically Samaras did the right thing.
If his coalition government (Nea Dimokratia popular party, PASOK socialists and DIMAR communists light) falls for this reason so much the better for Samaras. His Nea Dimokratia party will come out stronger, PASOK is likely to lose votes while DIMAR will certainly not reach the 3% threshold necessary to enter into Parliament. In such an election New Dimokratia is likely to be still the first winner but probably the Chrysi Avghi far right party will be second and third will be SYRIZA, a leftist compound of some 15 leftist components with core power the populists of PASOK.
That is why we think that there will be no election because of the “sudden death” of ERT.
The “sudden death” came unexpectedly not because the government did not talk about the matter before but because for years there were ongoing negotiations which were always reaching a deadlock, the staff striking openly (as opposed to the usual slow-down) while getting paid, suspending the strike only when the government was lowering the negotiation base bowing to the will of the trade unions. This was going on for years. The “sudden death” provoked by Samaras was not that “sudden” but it was something that nobody believed that he would ever dare even to think about.
Greece has some 15 TV channels of which four public (all in the ERT network) with a total of 4% of the total viewership, 700 journalists with minimum salary for doing very little or mostly nothing 5,000 Euros per month, 2,600 regular employees and an other 4,000 “collateral” colaborators working under similar conditions and salaries.
The political paradox in this case is that all trade unions have been mobilized and all leftist parties are opposing fiercely the decision despite the “sudden death” of ERT beeing the only correct yet courageous political decision a government has ever taken since the beginning of this crisis.
Prime Minister Andonis Samaras, as a personality is honest, sharp and intelligent, yet he is sometimes making quick decisions and may prove rather stubborn. In this case, this “yet” seems to be good for Greece.
What he realy did in this case, was to declare an all fronts war against the “army of internal occupation” of Greece, which is composed by trade unions and civil servants. Indeed, Samaras is now attempting to liberate the Greeks from the civil servants who are characterized by two elements: Strong leftist trade unions with privileges and powers no common mortal in Europe can imagine and corruption which, in the case of Greek administration, is systemic, horizontal and vertical.
The European Public Broadcasters
The European Solidarity expressed by the public televisions of Europe and certain quarters of the European Commission is due to the fact that if Samaras succeeds many others will follow in various Member States if not with the same but with similar moves. Indeed, several European public broadcasters have excess personnel, low viewership, overpaid staff and underperforming associates. ERT was the lead fortress for all European public broadcasters and now most of them are giving their rearguard battle in order to avoid the worse.
The European Commission, specifically the Media Department ((DG COMM), has many good reasons to oppose the Greek innovation. Its powers stem from European public broadcasters. A few years ago, under the political leadership of Commission vice President Martot Walstrom, an honest, entrusting and technically incompetent Danish, blacked out for years “Europe by Satellite”, only for certain public broadcasters to get its free footage.
At that time, the innocent Commissioner believed to the “innocence” of her associates and an investigation opened by the Internal Audit Service never reached OLAF as it was tacitly closed within the Commission.
Basil A. Coronakis europe on line
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