A meaningful sacrifice

Panos Kammenos, the nationalist coalition partner in Greece’s leftist-led government, recently warned the country’s international creditors against forcing the country’s ruling politicians to do a Kougi – a reference to an incident during the nation’s war of independence nearly 200 years ago, when a group of fighters blew themselves up to avoid ending up in the hands of Turkish troops.

The warning would have been more appropriate if it came with a minor alteration: It is a single politician who ought to sacrifice himself in order to save the country. Put differently, unless Greece’s ruling officials have the courage to elevate the interests of the country above the political damage and partisan dissent, the deal – any deal, if there is one – will never really be implemented.

In a recent article for the Financial Times, British historian Mark Mazower said that Tsipras has one final opportunity to “make the shift in role from student radical to national statesman.”

“If he can claim victory in defeat, present an agreement with the creditors as his, and hold new elections on a center-left platform some time in the autumn with the real prospect of significant debt relief, he may yet pull it off,” Mazower argued.

This pragmatic proposal has, for some time now, been debated at home and abroad as the only plan to prepare Greece for the day after. Any proposal, after all, must support the nation’s painful, albeit necessary, path to structural reform and economic growth.

There can be no safe prediction at this time as to whether an agreement will lead to deeper recession and austerity. Meanwhile, the hardest part of the deal, basically its implementation, will only come later. The dynamics, within Greece’s coalition parties as well as society, are also hard to assess.

Right at this moment, however, the prime minister is not being held accountable before SYRIZA’s Left Platform, nor is the country gauging his leftist credentials. Tsipras is only responsible before his country.

To tweak Kammenos’s warning, Greek politicians ought to do a Kougi with their petty partisan objectives. Ruling officials have to prove that they are not moved by their love of perks and power, but by a will to serve the interests of the country.

History demands sacrifices from all of us – above all, from government officials, political staffs and deputies. To take one example: Perhaps Greece’s rescue does not hang on the tax breaks enjoyed by deputies; however, such exemptions are even more provocative when the country is swept by horizontal tax measures.

The combination of Kougi and self-interest is not just cheap populism, it is also harmful populism. And this comes with a price that we all have to pay.