It seems that after six years of this crisis we have not yet realized how and why we went bankrupt. The conspiracy theories have proliferated in recent years and continue to appeal, not just among the public though. The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to refer the former president of ELSTAT Andreas Georgiou to a trial over the felony crime of false testimony is indicative of the predominant attitudes.

It should be noted that Mr. Georgiou was cleared of the charge from the Appeal Council in July last year, but an appeal was lodged by the deputy prosecutor at the time and current Supreme Court prosecutor Xeni Dimitriou. The former ELSTAT president is accused of artificially increased the GDP deficit from 13.6% to 15.4, so that our country could qualify for the bailouts! This data was studied for years from all the relevant European authorities – due to the dishonesty surrounding our statistics authority – and which were confirmed in practice by the tragic state of public finance. Now, after six years, the judiciary is disputing the data once again…

As if everyone did not know the situation, as if they did not know that under the Karamanlis government the public debt soared by 57 billion euros, as if the Governor at the Bank of Greece at the time did not warn about the exploding deficit, now were trying to see whether ELSTAT is the reason we went bankrupt and were forced into the bailouts.

Even if we were to accept the judiciary’s version of events, that Mr. Georgiou manipulated the data, it is a proven fact that we were rushing and asking for help because the state was unable to pay wages and pensions. Neither did Europe blackmail us, as some continue to believe, neither did any others conspire against us because they were jealous of our property. We, as a country went bankrupt. The responsibility lies with the politicians and the Karamanlis government in particular, by squandering the loans left and right.

When the situation got bad we were forced to ask for even more loans so that we did not face a complete collapse, to pay the wages of the judiciary, the public sector, pensions… Therefore it is not the statistics that are our problem, whether they are right or wrong, but our general mess which nobody could manage.

TO VIMA