GREEKS CONFUSED, DISTRESSED BY CRISIS
Far from the power centre of Athens, Greeks are still rubbing their eyes in confusion.
“Are we keeping the euro, are we leaving Europe, are we voting on Sunday? What is happening?” asked Stefanos Camber, a gas-station owner on the highway to Thessaloniki, as he pondered Wednesday whether to demand cash or accept a credit card from a customer. “Just tell us one thing, and we can go on with our lives.”
Eurozone finance ministers decided Wednesday to break off talks on more aid for Greece until after it holds a weekend referendum, even as the Greek government pressed ahead with plans to let the people decide whether to accept more austerity measures in exchange for a rescue deal.
Following a late-night teleconference, the chairman of the euro group said the 19 ministers had decided to put any further negotiations on hold.
“Given the political situation, the rejection of the previous pro- posals, the referendum, which will take place on Sunday, and the recommendation by the Greek government to vote ‘No,’ we see no grounds for further talks at this point,” Dutch Foreign Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said.
Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who called the popular vote for Sunday, was defiant, saying it would go ahead as planned and again urged citizens to vote No. In a televised address to the nation, he said a No result would not mean that Greece would have to leave the euro, as many European officials have argued.
Rather, Tsipras insisted, it would give the government a stronger negotiating position with creditors.
In the sleepier towns hundreds of kilometres away from Athens, residents said they were confused and dismayed at both the lack of clarity and their inability to plan for a future so uncertain.
And yet, rural Greeks live with the repercussions of every decision made in faraway Brussels and Athens. By Sunday night, even before capital controls were formally imposed, the two bank machines in Kamena Vourla, a seaside town, had run out of cash. Wednesday morning, the town gossips were abuzz with rumours of a fist fight as one of the ATMs blinked back to life and locals rushed it.
A reporter driving a rented Seat sedan along the glinting blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth and then north toward Greece’s industrial heartland found little but confusion and frustration among the Greeks queried.
The casino in Loutraki, a town with a rocky beach where swimming children squealed in the cold waters, stands as a reminder of the fickleness of government policy.
In the mid-1990s, as government jobs created a massive middle class and Greece’s economy soared after joining the European Union, the casino boomed. Built on the ruins of an earlier establishment destroyed in the 1930s, the place was always packed, said people who worked there. Now, the high-stakes tables stood empty and pensioners in T-shirts punched buttons on the one-euro slot machines.
“You should have seen the cars: Porsches, brand new Mercede- ses, even a McLaren F1,” said the parking valet as he parallel parked a rusting Ford Fiesta between a Skoda and a Volkswagen hatchback. “Now all you get are bored grandmothers.”
Across the street, a strip club was shuttered. Inside the casino, a croupier held his hands a foot apart as he described the wads of cash gamblers would bring in.
This week’s capital controls, which limit cash withdrawals to 60 euros a day, only hastened the impact that five years of austerity and a shrinking economy has had on the place. At the cash machine by the entrance, Giorgios, a 56-year-old Greek retiree, stared at the screen as he switched between bank cards. His hot streak had ended at the five-euro minimum blackjack tables, and his bank couldn’t give him any more money.
“You think this is funny,” he said, when asked if he saw his situation as a metaphor for Greece, out of cash and hoping creditors change their mind. “It’s my money, and I want it now.”