I only left Athens five days ago. I was in tears because I knew that my country, my home, would never be the same.
Last night I took the same late-night flight home to cast my vote in the infamous referendum.
I’ve returned to an economically and socially collapsed country, a torn country.
The situation reminds me of the Safety on Board instructions just before take-off. There are instructions for what you should do if the plane crashes and you are lucky enough to land on water.
However, no one tells you what to do or what happens if you crash anywhere else.
Greece is going to crash tomorrow, whether the people vote for a OXI:no or a NAI:yes. The crash might be on water or on mountains. No one has told people what happens either way.
Whether water or mountains, the government managed to torn the country apart overnight and there is no way of changing this.
When the new government was formed in January, the people voted for change with the hope that the new political elite will bring with it a new air of confidence and stability.
Greeks were proud for electing the – first ever – leftist government.
I personally doubt that people still believe that there is hope coming our way.
With the implementation of the capital controls, which are here to stay, people seem to be changing their minds. Or giving up. They surely did not expect to end up here.
Maybe hope and optimism is not in the Greek political agenda. And maybe, just maybe, we were all fooled by the unbelievable rhetorical skills of Mr Tsipras.
I believe in democracy and democratic ways (who doesn’t?).
However, the decision to have this referendum now seems as a way out for the government rather than a sound democratic decision. It seems just too convenient.
The moment that things were getting tougher, within the government as well as with the creditors, the PM threw the ball to the people.
Mr Tsipras let the people decide for the country’s future, without even explaining what is going to happen after the collision.
Greek politics never seizes to impress. The referendum was called only a week ago and everything is set for tomorrow. But still, no one knows what this referendum really means or what either result might bring.
The government has no actual plan, whatever the people decide. When we crash, we are going to be divided in two. And we all know that the whole is better than the sum of its parts.
What will happen is still uncertain and will remain uncertain for weeks on end.
Only a few months before the sixth year of the Greek crisis, it seems as though we are starting over again.
We all thought we reached rock bottom in 2010. And then again in 2011, 2012 and so on. No one expected that in 2015 we would throw all our efforts and everything we were struggling for the last five years out of the window.
Here we are now, not knowing, waiting for something to happen and for some magical way out of what we got ourselves into.
Let’s all hope that there is a plan that we do not know about and that the government has control over the situation. If not, I hope they realise this job is not for any of them and that they leave the building calmly.
Image courtesy of EuroNews via YouTube, with thanks
