In his effort to justify the unjustifiable and cover the major chasm between promises and reality, the vocal Labor Minister has resorted to new levels of mendacity. While the center of the new review in relation to social benefits and labor relations, he is trying to muddy the waters and cover for his Ministry’s lack of preparations by issuing constant and conflicting statements.
He appears as a hard negotiator struggling to protect social rights, but in practice it seems that he is accepting the institutions’ demands. Just like in the pension reform – where he supposed to fight against pension cuts and which were ultimately chopped – and similarly with the supplementary pensions and the letters he is sent out to sugarcoat the cuts, the same is happening now with social benefits and labor relations.
After claiming that no benefits would be slashed, he is now claiming that all overlapping benefits will be slashed in order to collect resources for the social solidarity benefit. This is SYRIZA’s well-known tactic of calling benefits the cuts carried out in order to comply with the creditor agreements.
They do not seem to understand, especially Mr. Katrougalos, that there is no real future with lying. However many statements on benefits or hard negotiations are made, when the pensioner or unemployed has to foot the bill, they get angry. Unfortunately for the so-called authentic defenders of public interests, the numbers are ruthless and cannot be swayed over by statements…
Whatever Mr. Katrougalos may say, when the pensioners see that their supplementary pensions are being wiped out, they are not reacting just for the money they are losing, but also the lies that they are being told. That is why SYRIZA has plummeted in the polls; that is why everyone who was tolerant and sided with it are not abandoning the party. So long as they continue with the same demagogic, self-defeating policy, the social anger will increase.
TO VIMA
