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.’
‘No, Alexi, I’m not interested.’ I told him. ‘You met me years ago because I turned Greece’s debt into the dragon to be slain, and because of my proposals for how to slay it. I live, breathe, think and dream of debt restructuring, of a reduction in surplus targets, an end to austerity, tax rate reductions and the redistribution of wealth and income. Nothing else interests me. To take on the economy ministry to manage the EU’s structural fund handouts, just so as to remain minister, is not something I want to do. Do you recall why I moved from America? Because you asked me to help you to liberate Greece financially. I ran for parliament not because I was dying to be an MP but because I did not want to be a technocrat, an unelected finance minister. I thought that that way I would be more useful to the cause. Now, given your abandonment of that cause, I have no reason to be a minister. It’s OK. Let someone else do it. I shall be in parliament, where I will help to the best of my ability.’
‘You can have some other ministry – maybe culture, which you and Danae know so much about?’ he said laughing. ‘In any case, there will be many posts in the future where you can help.’
‘You’re again confusing me with someone who cares about positions, Alexi. There’s only one thing I care about, and you know what it is!’
‘Let’s sleep on it, let’s think about it.’
‘There’s nothing to think about,’ I said. ‘There’s no time. You have a lot to do.’
When I saw Danae afterwards, she asked me what had happened. ‘Tonight we had the curious phenomenon of a government overthrowing its people,’ I said.
Minister no more
Back at the flat, I narrated my discussion with Alexis for Danae and her camera and slept for a couple of hours before writing my seventh and final resignation letter. After proofreading it a few times, I posted it on my blog under the title ‘Minister No More’. It was one of the hardest pieces of prose I had ever had to compose.
On the one hand, I had a duty to warn the people, the Greek demos, that their mandate was about to be trashed. On the other hand, I felt an obligation to preserve whatever progressive momentum there was within our government and within Syriza. At that stage I still believed strongly that comrades like Euclid, with clout in the party that I lacked, would not sign up to the surrender document Alexis and Dragasakis were preparing. Losing a second finance minister in a month or two, if Euclid refused to become complicit in another harsh and hopeless bailout, might cause a rupture within the government and the party. This in turn might lead to new elections, which could further undermine the chances of our honouring the wishes of the 61.3 per cent. I needed to signal both my defiant commitment to the no vote but also to issue a call for unity. The result was the following text.
Like all struggles for democratic rights, so too this historic rejection of the Eurogroup’s 25 June ultimatum comes with a large price tag attached. It is therefore essential that the great capital bestowed upon our government by the splendid no vote be invested immediately into a yes to a proper resolution – to an agreement that involves debt restructuring, less austerity, redistribution in favour of the needy and real reforms.
