Square of hope and glory
On the afternoon of Friday, 3 June, as the working day drew to a close, I breathed a sigh of relief. A week of closed banks was almost over. Despite the long queues at ATMs and the uncertainty of what awaited us the following Monday, there had been no violence, no panic, no civil unrest. The Greeks had proved themselves a sensible people.
The media, however, had managed to fall below their already absurdly debased standards, competing with one another to find the most innovative ways to frighten the public away from voting no. Much of the reporting of the no sponsors and supporters would in other countries have been deemed incitement to violence. The opinion polls consistently predicted that yes would win with more than 60 per cent of the vote, while comment writers foamed at the mouth at the government’s audacity in holding a referendum against the creditors’ wishes. Meanwhile, the parliamentary opposition had managed to persuade its supporters to take to the streets in some numbers, waving EU flags and placards proclaiming, WE ARE STAYING IN EUROPE!3
Later that Friday afternoon I received an email from Klaus Regling, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, the eurozone’s bailout fund. It was a reminder that he had the legal right to demand from me full and immediate repayment of the €146.3 billion lent to Greece as part of the first two bailouts. It was phrased in such a way as to suggest that I was personally liable, not least because as finance minister my name was on the loan agreement. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. I instructed my office to reply to our main creditor – to the man who had advised me to default to my pensioners instead of the IMF – with two ancient words. These were the defiant response of the king of Sparta, leader of the three hundred men who attempted to resist the entire Persian army at the legendary battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, when instructed by the enemy to throw down their weapons: ‘Μολών λαβέ’ – ‘Come and get them!’
That evening two rallies took place, one in favour of yes, outside the ancient Olympic stadium where the first modern Olympics were staged in 1896, and one at Syntagma Square for the no campaign. The yes rally was held in the late afternoon, and was large and good-natured, but the no rally at Syntagma was one for the ages. Since I was a boy, I had attended some magnificent, life-changing rallies at Syntagma Square, but what Danae and I participated in that night was unprecedented.
We walked to Syntagma from Maximos with Alexis and other members of the cabinet, their partners and aides. On the way we were mobbed by rapturous supporters. As we approached the square, the crowd’s energy exploded. A sea of five hundred thousand bodies consumed us. We were pulled into its depths by a forest of arms: tough-looking men with moist eyes, middle-aged women with determination written all over their faces, young boys and girls with boundless energy, older people eager to hug us and shower us with good wishes. For two hours, struggling to hold hands so as not to be separated, Danae and I were absorbed by a single body of people who had simply had enough.
People from different generations saw their distinct struggles coalesce on that night into one gigantic celebration of freedom from fear. An elderly partisan from the Second World War pushed into my pocket a carnation and a piece of paper bearing the phrase ‘Resistance is NEVER futile!’ Students forced to emigrate by the crisis who had returned to cast their votes begged me not to give up. A pensioner promised me that he and his sick wife did not mind losing their pensions as long as they recovered their dignity. And everybody, without a single exception, shouted at me, ‘No surrender, whatever the cost!’
I believed they meant it. The banks had already been closed for a week. The hardship imposed by the creditors was plainly visible. And yet, here they were, these magnificent people saying in one word everything that had to be said: ‘No!’ Not because they were recalcitrant or Eurosceptic. They craved the opportunity to say a big fat yes to Europe. But yes to a Europe for its people, as opposed to a Europe hell-bent on crushing them.
That night, as Danae and I eventually found ourselves walking up the marble steps leading to parliament, the phrase I had been looking for to describe what all this was about finally came to me: constructive disobedience. This was what I had been trying to practise in the Eurogroup all along: putting forward mild, moderate, sensible proposals, but when the deep establishment refused even to engage in negotiation, to disobey their commands and say no. The war cabinet had never understood this, but the body of humanity that filled Syntagma Square that night surely did.
One for true believers
That night the months of frustration, each terrible moment in Maximos, every disappointment along the way, all the nastiness and the stress had been wiped away, leaving nothing but contentment, and yet I was still not convinced that the no campaign would win the referendum. The demonstration suggested support for the cause had risen, but with the banks closed and the media screaming blue murder at anyone who even contemplated voting no, success looked unlikely.
Over dinner with Danae, Jamie and some other friends at an outdoor restaurant in the neighbourhood of Plaka, I was asked if Alexis and Euclid would resign were yes to win. ‘Alexis will form a coalition government with the opposition,’ I predicted, ‘after most of the true believers resign or are pushed.’ And I would be long gone by then, I said. But Jamie insisted I was wrong. No would win, he believed, and my leverage with Alexis would skyrocket, as I would have played a large part in delivering the result. Unconvinced, I nonetheless raised my glass to toast Jamie’s optimism. ‘¡Hasta la victoria siempre!’ he said with an intense and committed look – ‘To victory, always!’
On the day of the referendum I drove to Palaio Phaliro, the southern Athenian suburb where I grew up and where my father still lives. Together we made our way to the polling station. Inside, the majority of voters were ebullient when they saw me, except for one or two who remonstrated angrily with me that I had closed down the banks. With the television cameras rolling, I told one angry man that the troika had given us an ultimatum and that accepting it would shape his and his children’s future. What we had done was to give him the opportunity to vote for or against it. ‘Vote yes if you think it is a manageable deal. We are the only government that have respected your right to decide. The fact that the troika decided to close the banks down before you got the chance to express yourself is something that only you can interpret.’
After voting, as I was helping my father back to the car, an elderly woman approached me, surrounded by the usual television cameras. She asked me sternly if I knew where she lived. I admitted I didn’t. ‘I sleep in an orphanage here in Palaio Phaliro. And do you know why they let me? Because your mother worked tirelessly to let vagrants like me have a permanent shelter.’ I thanked her for her spontaneous and wonderful memory of my mother.4 But she was not finished. ‘I bless her every day. But do these bastards know this?’ she said pointing at the cameras and the TV crews. ‘I bet they don’t and they don’t even care.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I assured her. Even if they didn’t, it was enough that she knew. Nonetheless, I was upset when on the evening news our heart-warming encounter was presented as me being accosted by a homeless woman blaming me for her destitution.
It was not until late that afternoon that I began to sense an historic victory might be on the cards. At my office I composed a piece, in English, for my blog. ‘In 1967,’ I wrote, ‘foreign powers, in cahoots with local stooges, used tanks to overthrow Greek democracy. In 2015 foreign powers tried to do the same by using the banks. But they came up against an insanely brave people who refused to submit to fear. For five months, our government raged against the dying of the light. Today, we are calling upon all Europeans to rage with us so that the flickering light does not dim anywhere, from Athens to Dublin, from Helsinki to Lisbon.’
By 8 p.m. I could see from the drooping shoulders and morose expressions of TV presenters that we had won. What I did not yet know was the extent of our victory. My fear was that a close shave would give Alexis the excuse to say we had a divided nation and thus insufficient support for a rupture with the troika. I told my team that the magic number was 55 per cent. If the votes for no were any greater, Alexis would have to honour the result. I thought carefully of what I would say to the journalists gathered in my ministry’s press room in order to give him the necessary impetus to do so. By 9 p.m. I had written my speech. Traditionally, ministers wait for the prime minister to make his statement before issuing their own, so I waited in my office for Alexis to address the press at Maximos.
At 9.30 I began to feel something was wrong. The results were more or less final, indicating that the 55 per cent mark had been reached, but Alexis was still holed up in his office. My chief of staff was pressurizing me to go to our press room as the journalists were getting agitated and were beginning to tweet that something sinister was afoot. I waited until after 10.00 p.m. I called Alexis. He did not pick up, and nor did a secretary. Wassily walked in to inform me that other ministers were beginning to speak to the media, issuing lukewarm statements in response to what was in reality an earth-shattering outcome. I could not allow this to continue. Our voters deserved a proper response.
So at around 10.30 I headed for the press room to make my statement, intending to go to Maximos straight afterwards to discover what was going on there. As I read out my prepared statement I had the very strong feeling that it would be my last as a minister. That feeling, combined with the memory of Syntagma Square two nights earlier, made me read it defiantly, brazenly even.
On 25 January dignity was restored to the people of Greece. In the five months that has intervened since then, we became the first government that dared raise its voice, speaking on behalf of the people, saying no to the damaging irrationality of our extend-and-pretend bailout programme. We confined the troika to its Brussels lair; articulated, for the first time in the Eurogroup, a sophisticated economic argument to which there was no credible response; internationalized Greece’s humanitarian crisis and its roots in intentionally recessionary policies; spread hope beyond Greece’s borders that democracy can breathe within a monetary union hitherto dominated by fear.
Ending interminable self-defeating austerity and restructuring Greece’s public debt were our two targets. But these two were also our creditors’ targets. From the moment our election seemed likely, the powers that be started a bank run and planned, eventually, to shut Greece’s banks down. Their purpose? To humiliate our government by forcing us to succumb to stringent austerity. And to drag us into an agreement that offers no firm commitments to a sensible, well-defined debt restructure.
The ultimatum of 25 June was the means by which they planned to achieve these aims. The people of Greece today returned this ultimatum to its senders, despite the fear-mongering that the domestic oligarchic media transmitted night and day into their homes.
Our no is a majestic, big yes to a democratic Europe. It is a no to the dystopic vision of a eurozone that functions like an iron cage for its peoples. But it is a loud yes to the vision of a eurozone offering the prospect of social justice with shared prosperity for all Europeans.
As I stepped out into Syntagma Square I saw delight in the faces around me. A proud people had been vindicated and were justly celebrating. The night air was full of anticipation and confidence. Alexis’s silence filled me with apprehension, but I refused to believe that Maximos was sealed off from that intoxicating air of defiance. Surely, I thought, it had found its way in through some crack in the walls or through the hearts of the people working there who had also learned their politics at Syntagma Square. And yet, as I walked in, Maximos felt as cold as a morgue, as joyful as a cemetery.
The overthrowing of a people
In Maximos the ministers and functionaries I encountered looked numb, uncomfortable in my presence, as if they had just suffered a major electoral defeat. Alexis was with the president in the adjacent presidential palace and would see me later, his secretary informed me, so I waited in the conference room with other ministers, watching as the last results were declared on television. When the final number flashed up on the screen, 61.31 per cent for no in a turnout of 62.5 per cent, I jumped up and punched the air, only to realize that I was the only one in the room celebrating.5
As I sat waiting for Alexis, I found a message on my phone from Norman Lamont: ‘Dear Yanis, congratulations. A famous victory. Surely they will listen now. Good luck!’ They would listen, I thought, but only if we were prepared to speak up. Sitting there, I began noticing things about the people around me that had previously escaped me. The men had shed the rough Syriza look and resembled accountants. The women were dressed as if for a state gala. When Danae joined me, I realized that not only were we the only happy people in the place but the only ones in jeans and T-shirts. It felt a little like being in one of those sci-fi movies in which body-snatching aliens have quietly taken over.
Eventually Alexis arrived and, half an hour later, addressed the nation on television. Two key phrases in his speech unlocked the vault of his intentions. One ruled out a rupture with the troika; the other was his announcement that he had just asked the president to convene immediately a council of political leaders. On the morning after their decisive defeat, the pro-troika leaders of the ancien régime were being summoned to join him at the discussion table. ‘He is splitting Syriza and preparing a coalition with the opposition to push the troika’s new bailout through,’ I told Danae. I waited another hour and a half as he held separate meetings with Sagias and Roubatis before he would receive me.
It was after 1.30 a.m. when I entered his office. Alexis stared at me and said we had messed up badly.6
‘I don’t see it that way,’ I replied flatly. ‘There were plenty of mistakes, but on the night of such a triumph we have a duty to rejoice and honour the result.’
Alexis asked me if I minded Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, the Maximos legal adviser, sitting in on our meeting.
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘In fact I want him here as a witness.’ This was not going to be just another chat.
Alexis asked if the banks would open soon. It was a trick question. He was looking to justify his decision to capitulate. I pretended not to understand, saying that to honour the no vote we had immediately to start issuing electronic IOUs backed by future taxes and to haircut Draghi’s SMP bonds. ‘Without these moves to bolster your bargaining power,’ I said, ‘the 61.3 per cent will be scattered in the winds. But if we announce this tonight, with 61.3 per cent of voters backing us, I can assure you that Draghi and Merkel will come to the table very quickly with a decent deal. Then the banks will open the next day. If you don’t make this announcement, they will steamroller you.’ I explained that I needed only a couple of days to activate this system using the tax office’s website.
He pretended to be impressed, so I continued.
‘This 61.3 per cent result is a capital asset that you must use well. You must manage it with greater respect to the people out there than you showed before the referendum. You must respect yourself more too. After tonight you have a simple choice. Either you reactivate our plan, giving me the tools I need, or you surrender.’
We talked for a long time. We reviewed the previous months, weeks and days. I took no prisoners, giving a litany of his errors, pointing out the ways in which members of the war cabinet had jeopardized our struggle, often in collaboration with the troika and its operatives. I shared with him evidence of one of them behaving in a way that bordered on corruption.
Looking surprised, Alexis asked Dimitris: was the person I referred to such a problem? Dimitris answered, ‘Yes, even more so.’
The conversation was meandering, so I decided to put it to him straight: would he honour the no vote, I asked, by going back to our original covenant, or was he about to throw in the towel?
His answer was elliptical, but there was no mistaking the direction in which it headed: towards unconditional surrender. The first time in that conversation that he spoke decisively was when he said, ‘Look, Yani, you are the only one whose predictions were confirmed. But here is the problem: if any other government had given them what I did, the troika would have sealed the deal by now. I gave them more than Samaras ever would, and they still wanted to punish me, as you had said they would. But – let’s face it – they do not want to give an agreement either to you or to me. Let’s be honest. They want to overthrow us. However, with the 61.3 per cent they cannot touch me now. But they can destroy you.’
‘Don’t worry about me, Alexi,’ I said. ‘Worry about honouring the people out there celebrating tonight while you’re planning to give in. If we stick together, activate our deterrent and show them we’re united, they will touch neither you nor me. We could propose to them a deal that they could package credibly as their own idea, their own triumph.’
At that point Alexis confessed to something I had not anticipated. He told me that he feared a ‘Goudi’ fate awaited us if we persevered – a reference to the execution of six politicians and military leaders in 1922.7 I laughed this off, saying that if they executed us after we had won 61.3 per cent of the vote, our place in history would be guaranteed. Alexis then began to insinuate that something like a coup might take place, telling me that the president of the republic, Stournaras, the intelligence services and members of our government were in a ‘readied state’. Again I fended him off: ‘Let them do their worst! Do you realize what 61.3 per cent means?’
Alexis told me that Dragasakis had been trying to persuade him to get rid of me, everyone from the Left Platform and Kammenos’s Independent Greeks and instead forge a coalition government with New Democracy, PASOK and Potami. Dragasakis had assured him that once the agreement with the troika had been signed, Alexis could then get rid of New Democracy, PASOK and Potami and bring me back. I told him it was the stupidest idea I had ever heard.
He smiled, seeming to agree, and used an expression for Dragasakis that is not reproducible here.‘But there is something to the idea of proceeding in two ways, one public, one hidden. Publicly, we can approach the creditors in a right-wing manner, involving a reshuffle that says, “We’re good kids now,” but at the same time, hidden from public view, we can prepare a counterstroke.’
‘This is bad thinking, Alexi,’ I told him. ‘Look, tonight the people voted. They didn’t vote no for you to turn it into a yes.’ I told him he had to come out and say what I had said in my press statement earlier: that the no vote had given him the mandate he required to bring about a solution in cooperation with our European partners. ‘Add some complimentary words for the commission, the IMF, even for the ECB, to illustrate that we mean it when we say we want a cooperative solution, but simultaneously project strength. None of this nonsense about preparing for an underground war in the catacombs.’ I told him that whatever we did now, we had to do it out in the open. We had to state clearly that we were preparing our own liquidity, as we had a duty to do when the ECB was keeping our banks closed. And we had to state clearly that the ECB’s SMP bonds would be restructured according to Greek law, the law under which they were created.
‘It will be very difficult for them to give us a solution, Yani,’ he said.
‘You keep making the mistake of thinking of a solution as something they give us,’ I replied. ‘That’s not the right way to think about it. They need a solution as much as we do. It’s not something that they hand out. We must extract it from them. But this requires that we have a credible threat. The SMP haircut and our own liquidity is exactly that!’
We were going round in circles, our bodies and minds wrecked by fatigue, so I told him that, since he had made his mind up to surrender one way or another, he had better just tell me what he had decided to do now. He said he was thinking of reshuffling the cabinet so as to stop the troika, the creditors and the media from targeting me. He asked me who I thought should replace me at the finance ministry. He had clearly decided who it would be already, but I decided to play along, suggesting the person who I was certain had agreed to take over from me already – my good friend Euclid. I even offered to try to convince Euclid to accept. (And when I did, Euclid pretended he needed to think about it.)
‘I would like to ask you to take over the economy ministry, so as to team up again with Euclid,’ Alexis said.
‘What about Stathakis?’ I asked.
‘I’ll be happy not to see him in front of me again. Let him vanish to the backbenches.’
