Who remembers Ithaca?

Who remembers Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s speech on the island of Ithaca last summer, when he said that Greece’s bailout odyssey was over?

The expectation that the country would be at liberty to command its fate after the official end of the third memorandum in August was something that everyone knew belonged only to the realm of the government’s narrative. The country’s status after the memorandum was clearly outlined in the agreements with Greece’s creditors.

Recent reports from Brussels not only confirm that Greece remains under strict supervision, as was obvious; they also drive home the fact that Greece remains a country which needs to be controlled so that it doesn’t succumb to the impulses of its political system.

The memorandums may be gone, but the reasons why we needed them in the first place are not.