Athens - Greeks
resigned themselves to a €130bn European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout that won their country a
last-minute reprieve from bankruptcy at the price of a decade of austerity and
humiliating foreign scrutiny of national finances.
Agreements among eurozone ministers during all-night talks
in Brussels on Monday secured a second rescue package since 2010 in return for
a new round of spending cuts that have already cost thousands of jobs and
eroded public services.
Relief mingled with a sense of shame on the streets of
Athens as Greeks, who in two months could be choosing a new government, digested
what the deal means for a country now being treated as the sick patient of the
17-nation currency union.
"We are like drug addicts who have just been given
their next dose, this is what they've reduced our country to," Ioulia
Ioannou, 70, a retired nurse, said of the country's politicians.
"I don't know who I will vote for. I'd vote for a new
party if someone had the courage to create one," said the lifelong voter
for the ruling Socialist PASOK party, whose popularity has been hammered by the
crisis.
"For the first time, I'm embarrassed to say I'm
Greek."
Fellow pensioner Vasia Angelou, born to Nazi occupation of
Greece during World War Two and who saw harsh junta rule during the 1960s and
1970s, said the deal at least averted the risk for now of Greece leaving the
euro and even the EU.
"I'm relieved," the retired advertising firm
employee said.
"We have lived through worse times in Greece and many
people don't realise life would be much harder if we were kicked out of Europe.
I have some hope at least my children's lives will be better," she said of
two grown-up children studying in Britain.
But the Demokratia tabloid that has run computer-generated
pictures of Chancellor Angela Merkel in a Nazi uniform splashed the front-page
headline: "130 billion in chains."
"Salvation under conditions," ran the headline of
the centre-left Ta Nea newspaper in a front-page editorial.
Austerity measures have already triggered mass street
protests in Athens and street clashes between security forces and masked youths
who this month torched dozens of buildings.
'A new hell'
In a possible foretaste of tensions to come, dozens of fuel
station owners and truck drivers blocked roads on Tuesday outside a finance
ministry building, with banners attacking international lenders to Greece as
"thieves and smugglers".
The country's two main unions, GSEE and ADEDY, called for
protests on Wednesday and leftist parties enjoying a rise in popularity said
the price of avoiding default was too high.
"The other side of the coin is the disorderly default
for the people," Aleka Papariga, head of the communist KKE party, told a
news conference. "A new hell awaits them."
Lucas Papademos, Greece's technocrat caretaker prime
minister, had told lawmakers to back the deeply unpopular international
financial rescue or condemn the country to "uncontrolled economic chaos
and social explosion".
Unemployment has leapt to 20% and street crime is up as the
Greek economy has shrunk by over 16% since a 2008 peak, weighed down by
spending cuts, the global downturn and the cost of servicing debt now at 160%
of national output.
The Brussels deal was only secured after private holders of
Greek bonds agreed to take deep losses on their investments and after northern
states led by EU paymaster Germany demanded - and won - unprecedented rights to
inspect Greece's finances.
The EU's executive European Commission arm said it would
finalise arrangements this week to send in new officials from other European
countries to monitor how Athens acts on agreed reforms, including in sensitive
areas such as tax evasion.
"I am embarrassed as a Greek citizen to have a
permanent surveillance committee," said fruit vendor Raptis Michalis.
"It is as if we don't have in Greece educated and able
people to govern the country," he said, forecasting that Greece would
still default on its debt a few months down the line.
A government spokesperson said foreign officials would merely
offer technical assistance and played down an agreement with lenders to set up
an escrow account to ringfence bailout funds for debt repayment. But others
were of a different view.
"The escrow account suggests the country is not
reliable," said George Koumoutsakos, a European Parliament deputy for the
New Democracy (ND) conservatives in the ruling coalition.
"But I would say that this is not the worst thing. The
surveillance mechanism is much more degrading."
Attack on Schaeuble
In the lead-up to the vote Greece's president accused German
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble of insulting his nation, reflecting growing
public resentment of almost daily lectures from Berlin on the dire state of the
Greek economy.
"I cannot accept Mr Schaeuble insulting my
country," said Karolos Papoulias, an 82-year-old veteran of Greece's
resistance struggle against the Nazi occupation and who also played a part in
the resistance to the junta.
"Who is Mr Schaeuble to insult Greece? Who are the
Dutch? Who are the Finnish?" he said in a speech earlier this month that
captured the depth of feeling about foreign intervention in Greek affairs.
Voters' disenchantment with politicians they blame for years
of economic mismanagement has sent ratings for PASOK and ND - which have
dominated politics since junta rule - to record lows.
A survey by pollster GPO carried out days after parliament's
February 13 backing for €3.3bn of new austerity measures showed the two mustering
less than a third of votes between them as small left-wing rivals gained
ground.
But separate poll findings that consistently show most
Greeks want to stay in the eurozone, together with laws aimed at ensuring that
elections create solid coalitions, could still favour the two big parties in
elections slated for April.
"Despite what the leftist parties are saying, even now
almost 70% of the public believes we have to do everything to stay in the eurozone," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of the Alco polling group.
"The only solution for a stable government will be this
kind of coalition government," he said of a new PASOK-ND alliance, tipping
the non-affiliated Papademos to emerge as the consensus choice for a new term.