ATHENS – A general strike paralysed Greece yesterday in the first major test of the socialist government’s resolve to push through unprecedented austerity cuts needed to avert a fiscal meltdown.
Protest fever swept the country with public transport paralysed, ferries holding at docks and air traffic grounded as unions went on the warpath against the latest wave of spending cuts and tax hikes.Financial markets worldwide suffered heavy losses as fresh fears spread overnight from Europe and Wall Street to Asia yesterday that a massive Greek bailout will not be enough to stop its debt crisis from hitting Spain and Portugal.Hundreds of thousands of civil servants kicked off the protests on Tuesday and a group of about 200 communists also stormed Athens Acropolis, unfurling banners reading ‘Peoples of Europe, Rise Up.’’The Greek people have been called to make sacrifices while the rich pay nothing,’ said the head of the million-member strong GSEE private sector union, Giannis Panagopoulos.Yesterday’s walkout, the third general strike in as many months, came as the government raced to push the austerity drive through parliament, looking to its comfortable majority there to pass the package today.Greece’s main unions were to mass in central Athens at 11h00 am before marching through the streets of the capital to converge on the parliament building.May Day marches on Saturday led to clashes between anarchists and police who fired tear gas to restore order.A government official downplayed the walkout saying that ‘for years there’s been strikes and protests in this country without much consequence. We’re used to it.’Despite the mounting tensions, political scientist Ilias Nikolakopoulos at polling institute Opinion predicted that ‘people are going to put up’ with the belt-tightening.’Of course surprises are always possible but I don’t believe in an explosion of social discontent,’ he said.Pushed to the brink of default, the government agreed at the weekend to slash spending and jack up taxes in return for 110 billion euros (US$143 billion) in loans over three years from eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.Among the major measures, the government is to cut 13th and 14th month bonus pay for civil servants and retirees; require three years more for pension contributions; and raise the retirement age for women to 65, the same level as men currently.’Given the scale of the public opposition to the austerity measures it is still unclear whether Greece will ultimately be willing to take years of fiscal punishment and recession to get its fiscal house in order,’ economist Ben May at Capital Economics said.’Accordingly, it is still unwise to rule out the government eventually defaulting or restructuring its debts,’ he added.After months of hesitation, eurozone countries and the IMF agreed to lend Greece billions at below market rates after concerns soared last week that the Greek debt crisis could trigger a knock-on effect elsewhere.Fighting accusations of holding up a bailout for Greece, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that the Greek debt crisis marked a turning point for the European Union, urging an overhaul of its embattled fiscal rules.’The future of Europe and the future of Germany within Europe is at stake,’ Merkel said in a German parliament in a debate on Berlin’s unpopular decision to lend 22,4 billion euros in taxpayers’ money to Greece.IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, in comments to the French daily Le Parisien published yesterday, said the EU-IMF package had been put together with the idea of preventing such a scenario. But he added there was always a risk of ‘contagion’ and that ‘we must nevertheless remain vigilant’. Contagion fears triggered a major sell-off of European and US stocks on Tuesday that spread to Asian markets yesterday while the euro fell to fresh one-year lows below 1,30 dollars.European markets recovered slightly at the opening of trading yesterday. – Nampa-AFP
