Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is carefully preserved for historical and informational reading.

Because of the economic crisis, we should have become wiser and more careful in our criticism, our choices, and our decisions.

Learning about the state's overindebtedness, we ought to have agreed on smart measures for repaying, or arranging, the debts, developing the economy, and putting the state in order.

First of all, the election of suitable persons was needed: capable politicians, specialists, and technocrats who would undertake to find the necessary immediate solutions through measures for economic growth. Without electoral procedures and party chatter.

The selection of the best is not difficult. It would be enough for citizens equipped with the right to vote to decide, setting aside party, football-like divisions and factions, to elevate the most capable members of society, drawing from the country's own reservoir as well as from distinguished Greeks of the diaspora.

The gifted cosmopolitan Greeks abroad could have been called upon to give their knowledge, experience, and illumination to those of us who do not want to see beyond the end of our nose. We are incapable of being governed with intelligence and prudence without the help of capable, experienced, and gifted specialists.

The majority of citizens, angered by inhuman and irrational tax raids, by the drastic reduction of income, galloping unemployment, and the dysfunction of the state, turned toward the extremes.

The parties of the far left, SYRIZA and DIMAR, acquired percentages their lifelong leaders could not have imagined even in their dreams. They are already preparing to govern by bringing back the insignificant figures of PASOK who joined their forces, undaunted and proud.

The insignificant party of the extreme right enjoyed similar honors and glories, with its percentages climbing to 7% and its leader's arrogance at its height.

Instead of seriousness, intensive work, cooperation, and intelligent moves, the professionals of politics and guilds found the "memorandum" as a scapegoat. That is, the contract signed under the circumstances, in its first and second phase, with the European partners and the IMF, thanks to which the holes in the state balance sheet are covered.

Exploiting popular discontent, social indignation, furious anger among thousands of people paid without working, as well as the fear of dismissal among surplus employees, the extremists of the left, the fewer extremists of the right, and the most shameless of the center-right formed a front, not against corruption, chaotic bureaucracy, tax evasion, and aggressive kleptocracy, but against the ...loan agreements we need.

The front was formed by the "anti-memorandum" forces. Opposed to them stood the "pro-memorandum" forces.

The national division was revived as caricature. Down with the memorandum, long live the loans. Immediate denunciation and condemnation of the memorandum, but continued collection of the loans and ratification of the debt "haircut". Unconditionally. Without prerequisites, without commitments, and without obligations, because "the Greek neck does not endure a yoke"...

With the international media broadcasting our country's tragic farce, the anti-memorandum jesters clash with the pro-memorandum empty heads, filling television time with inarticulate shouting, as everyone speaks at once, insults, abuse, monstrosities, extreme behavior, and foolish statements.

No meaning comes out of television and radio programs. We understand only that the planted guests who are promoted possess impudence, audacity, and ignorance in more than sufficient quantity.

The self-styled "anti-memorandum" forces conceal that the memorandum of May 2010 was not implemented and that the required structural changes were not made to lay the foundation for growth through investment and exports. Statism was not abolished, nor did consumption with borrowed money cease. The closed professions of the guilds were not opened, and the required urgent reforms were not carried out.

They set aside the fact that the consequence of resistance to necessary reforms and the failure, or indifference, of politicians in government and opposition alike was the need for the second memorandum, with the reduction of the minimum daily wage by 22%, still at a level three times higher than Bulgaria's, and with other restrictions and obligations.

Instead of confrontation, criticism, and dialogue about the reasons reforms and changes were not carried out, the "anti-memorandum" forces campaigned against the "pro-memorandum" forces, declaring with shouts, threats, and curses, as Kammenos did, that they would try their pro-memorandum opponents for high treason, liberate the country, denounce the memorandum, and triumph by defeating the "international usurers".

The declarations of the parties and splinter groups of the Marxist left and the National Socialist extreme right were the same and worse.

Enlisted in the camp of the anti-memorandum forces, all the extremists and the enraged declared war against the leaders of Germany, France, and the USA, against the IMF, usurers, and capitalism, while remaining attached to statism, bureaucracy, guilds, protected privileges, sinecures, and the other dysfunctions and failures that caused the domestic, endemic crisis.

With their frenzies, incoherences, fiery declarations, and extreme manifestations, the tiny parties of the far left managed to escape obscurity.

One of them, the most extreme and furious, is already claiming government with the prospect of repeating the achievement of the equally extreme PASOK of the 1980s.

The other splinter party of Kouvelis preaches "prudence" and the European prospect, stuck to the antiquated leftist doctrines of the previous century. Without a trace of renewal, despite its title.

Kammenos's party sets the tone in the anti-memorandum movement of foolishness. It cooperates with no one, speaks to no one, and stubbornly renounces the memorandum, the alleged cause of all the country's evils.

That is why the pro-memorandum forces failed to cooperate among themselves and with the anti-memorandum forces. Both conflicting camps draw their strength from the foolishness of the many, who, instead of demanding logical, modern, and enlightened solutions, prefer to behave as they have learned to behave: as if they were in a stadium, with the terms and conduct of football supporters. And time flows, passes, and is lost, and with it the opportunities for an immediate exit from the crisis...