By Olga and Tanya Yeritsidou
The pro-government propagandistic broadcasting in lieu of objective reporting shown in the news bulletins of the main mass media stations has by now become blatantly apparent to and at the same time a point of great disconcert and anger for us. (This may not hold for all mass media stations, as we have not had occasion to watch any small or regional channel simply due to the absence of a television set in the house for ideological reasons). However, the main media stations that we have watched did allow for the governmental line to be enforced (rather than simply be presented and discussed along with differing opinion) with unprecedented fanaticism reminiscent of darker past eras and regimes. Those stations in fact made a concerted effort to curtail and shepherd public opinion so that anything black be accepted as white, any injustice as justice served and any foolhardy act as the ‘solely logical alternative’.
The more the Popular wrath ferments its discontent and the greater the consequent rejection of a submissive and dubiously collaborating government that acts worse than the most obedient pencil pusher of a protectorate, the greater the hatred, anger, dander and exasperation felt and shown by the ‘big-deal’ reporters at every which mega, ant1 and every other bulletin sporting ‘analyst windows’. Via those ‘windows’, the big-deal reporters ‘express their opinion’ trashing in the process their guests’ argument / proof / evidence, parroting and repeating like a broken record the sentence ‘let’s not bring the government into this / this is the government / this is a governmental decision, there shall be no further discussion of it’. This of course is not objective journalism, and neither do their central bulletins come anywhere near to being ‘news bulletins’, as many a reporter and critic have time and again poignantly commented and analyzed.
It was for these reasons that my daughter and I decided to approach and listen to the side that is repeatedly gagged in the absence of a Tremi, Stravelakis or a Kapsis, Pretenderis, Tsimas, Chasapopoulos breaking the line of argument of every trucker and tearing their clothes in indignation so as to preclude any hearing of the opposite side’s evidence that they would obviously have found hard to reject in an objective and democratic discussion.
In the day of the parliamentary ratification of the law plan concerning the truckers, we went to Syntagma Square, at the Unknown Soldier Monument, to see and listen to what those people, who had had to sleep overnight on the grass or the park benches in a sign of protest, had to say, and understand the reason why they have been so furiously fought against by the state propagandists, who oblige to do the work of the government people that have the effrontery to justify their actions in the name of social justice.
We saw people with their courage undermined, who remained there in spite of their despair, hoping that justice would be served because ‘if they returned empty-handed, there would be no future for them one way or the other’.
When we asked why that was so, we were given the explanation that many of them were in serious debt in the banks because of the stupendous amount of money hitherto required for a trucker’s state license, necessitating the mortgaging of their houses or trucks themselves as collateral. The law recently ratified by the parliament levels the value of the state trucker’s license to zero without however first reimbursing the present license holders so that they can free themselves from their bank debt they are called to honor knowing that they would be paying off something that holds no market value anymore. The law plan also paves the way for an uncontrollable selling off of hundreds of licenses, at no additional cost, to large-scale industrialists who will then use drivers under unprotected or no work contracts, creating in other words, a cartel of logistics companies under the mother company brand name, effectively preempting and curtailing any capacity of the individual drivers to operate freely and make a decent income.
To remain competitive, any market that is opened must ensure that all parties start from the same line, at least as far as the basic parameters are concerned, i.e, making sure that the pre-existing professionals will not default or that no particular interested party will be preferentially protected via this opening. If this basic principle does not hold, in fact any so-called ‘closed profession’ will remain closed de facto, by simply excluding a particular type and kind of professional from its ranks. This is neither social justice nor adherence to Human Rights and the rules of truly free and competitive market.
Besides, in all other cases of disappropriation, the law and common practice requires an immediate and actual compensatory reimbursement commensurate to the value of the property which is being disappropriated. Even in the cases of nationalization of even bankrupt or inactive businesses of either local or international interest, the state (and indeed PASOK) paid its previous owner his weight in gold, without even examining whether he was the rightful owner, all things considered.
This is a case of disappropriation of particular proprietary rights without any compensation to the average Citizen whatsoever, who, on the other hand, have invested all their lives’ savings and their children’s future in those properties.
It is clear that these people will react and they will not be easily stopped, unless of course they are broken, whatever this means. Many amongst them feel that one solution is suicide or forced migration under the worst of conditions.
This fact we just described is not aired and gets the gag the moment someone tries to communicate it. Similarly hidden from public knowledge is the government’s cynical breach of the recent agreement reached with the truckers’ unions according to which the truckers had agreed to foot the damages (as have – so far at least – all the Greek People in hopes of seeing some future via this sacrifice) and agreeing to specific terms under which the opening of their profession would take place.
Instead of sticking to the terms of the agreement (which would preclude ANY protest on their part) the PASOK state in accord with the other political parties unilaterally defaulted this agreement and enforced new terms, offering no explanation but only profuse derision and scorn.
It is therefore unsurprising that there are both protests and anger, because while the truckers had reached an agreed upon compromise, they were deceived on this very compromise.
The case of the truckers and their manipulation by the government is just a small sample of the way the government is manipulating the sum of the Greek People: that government was voted into power under a totally different platform, banking once more on the (fake) label of the ‘socialist’ and soon came to be shown not as a legally-elected government bent on serving the mandate given to it by the People, but as a dictator who derides and showers with the worst of disdaining epithets every single one against its politics. He is not even a dictator serving the interests of this country, since he is selling it off as if it were its own piece of property, indeed being willing to pave with gold the path of every foreign investor.
The manipulation that has befallen the truckers at this time has been seen in other professions that were also fooled, not to mention the cuts in every pension that did not concern political supporters, and the UNBELIEVABLY MONSTROUS STATISM AND PROTECTIONISM FROM THE FORCES OF THE MARKET of the banks, industrialists, shipowners and foreign ‘investors’.
It is therefore blatantly clear why the mass media are so profusely embracing the governmental chosen paths of action against every group of People (farmers, port workers, civil servants, private employees, pensioners, pharmacists, doctors, gas station owners, teachers, workers of all kinds and trades – from construction workers to factory workers – , stagiers, mothers, cleaning ladies, free professionals – self-employed professionals, small business proprietors – family businesses mainly under a self-employed regime, and so many others) who react in a futile attempt to protect – not all (as they should because it is their right) but only just their BASIC Human Rights to work, decent living, access to medicare, education, securing their property rights and of course, to Equality and Justice for All.
The unbounded and illegal (constitutionally, legally and journalistically) mass media propaganda has hashed and suppressed the fact that the truckers HAD AGREED TO THE OPENING OF THEIR PROFESSION UNDER SPECIFIC TERMS AND CONDITIONS. The mass madia blatantly and with impunity lie when they claim that the truckers are moving against ‘the opening of their profession’.
The truth is that they are mobilizing against the enforcement of terms regarding their profession that were never put on the negotiating table, and that directly lead them to group default, unemployment and poverty for them and their families.
Their protest is against the fraudulent handling and derisive disdain of their case by the government, and not against the particulars of opening the profession to new prospective incumbents.
And because they are continuously been gagged and pummeled by a group of biased fanatic cronies dependent for their survival on the government people and large-scale business industrialists (with whom many have family relationships and vested interests to reap from this injustice), the truckers are both furious and desperate.
Unfortunately, it is a typical example of what is already happening or is about to happen in every profession, closed or open, of the Greek Professionals (since the foreigners enjoy state protection) in their own country.
Trying to enter the Parliament during that day, they shouted ‘we are Greeks’ and the SWAT did not attack because the truckers squared their shoulders and heads, without attacking. When we showed them how to demand, peacefully and legally, that their spokesman enter the Parliament (rather than entering it as a group, listening also to what the SWAT had to say about their own blackmail from their superiors if such a case came to be), they followed our advice and succeeded: This was something that no mass media station referred to, despite the fact that all present reporters at the scene immediately made it known by mobile to their headquarters.
Singing the National Anthem, and hand in hand – they waited to hear their voice (via their spokesman who had entered the Parliament under police escort) through the loudspeakers.
Inside the Parliament, the party ‘representative’ deputies gave him a tap in the back as if he were ‘one of the laborers down the cotton field’, patronizingly and condescendingly took him out again, precluding him from exercising his Democratic Right to the Freedom of the Speech, even through reading from a written piece paper, so that what he had to say would be recorded to the session minutes.
There is nothing that cannot justify the sum total of the actions of the truckers, and the government being an accessory before the fact IN EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.
Despite the urging of certain curious planted blokes who kept on shouting, with inexplicable fanaticism, to push the truckers into acts of hooliganism, they showed remarkable restraint and respect for the Guards, whom they enthusiastically applauded and demanded that they not be pushed away again because ‘they were Greeks and capable of protecting their own boys (the Guards)’ at the Monument of the Unknown Soldier.
There were many more facts that we came to know by being there and through our conversations, not only with the truckers but also with other groups of people who also happened to be there as well as by talking to the SWAT themselves, but the purpose of the present article is to present the very fact that is gagged in all channels only to show censored, altered, edited and propaganda-filled sequences coupled with threats and impression-seeking stunts.
Whatever objective court, and above all the Human Rights Tribunal, would clearly reject the government’s case. This should be the next move of every profession under governmental threat, and not just of the truckers.
Translation courtesy of Michael T.