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Opinions of Monday, 29 June 2015

Columnist: Kwabena Nyamekye

Greece is on fire! Happy days are here again!

Opinion Opinion

After a lull for about 25 years in global political economy, another example of manufactured solidarity has been exposed for the nonsense that it has always been.

This example is Greece, and with its economy in tatters, the Greek people seeing incomes and pensions being slashed by around 25% and with unemployment escalating to about 40% for some age groups, my heart is filled with great joy.

Now there is nothing personal here. No one from Greece has ever caused me direct harm - I hardly know a single Greek person and thus, I have no personal issues with them.

Why I am joyful stems from the fact that the world seems to have started to forget what the nonsense of centralized, top-down forced solidarity, can do to a country, its economy and its people.

Learning is a good thing and the implosion of Greece gladdens me as it is a lesson on how to avoid a political and economic disaster.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and its perverted economic principles seems to have been forgotten by most.

The Soviet Union was the second largest empire in world history and had immense natural wealth. Yet grand economic folly brought it to its knees and the country imploded with it supposed friendly component units like Latvia and Lithuania shaking off its yoke and going their own way.

Before its welcomed demise, the image sold by left-wing forces in Africa, in particular, was that this entity was an oasis of working class solidarity in a world buffeted by the evil forces of capitalism.

Follow our example of bringing workers together under the umbrella of a single state and all will be well. In the post-second world war era, countries of Eastern Europe such as Bulgaria and Albania were added to the Soviet Union as satellites.

Glory to Marx, Lenin and Trotsky was the cry you heard from Legon and other places. The fact that ordinary peoples wanted absolutely nothing to do with that huge Communist monstrosity was lost as their voices were silenced by the instruments of state terror and oppression.

What worsened this for me was the clap-trap called pan-Africanism seemed to draw inspiration from this model. If only we could unify all of Africa under one government, with a single president, and a single currency like the Soviet Union and its Rouble, Africa will become a powerhouse of sorts.

Force all Africans into one country irrespective of the wishes of their people was the cry; construct this Utopia called Africa from the minds of the post-independent elite and not from the hearts of the thousands of people who, frankly, wanted nothing to do with such nonsense, was the call to the pan-African faithful.

Greece, a country that gave the world so much by way of learning decided to enter into the biggest cesspit of financial folly known to financial man – the Euro and Greece is now reaping exactly what is has sown.

You see, if you are dim-witted enough to abandon your currency, and the control you have over your economy, Nyamekye will never shed a single tear for you when you suddenly realize you need to take decisions in your national interest but cannot do so because you do not have a currency.

In the run up to the Euro warnings were issued to all those going on about solidarity of Europe’s peoples (and how the Euro was a mark of this) that when a member country’s economy was in trouble and needed to engage in what has come to be called quantitative easing, it will not be able to do so since it did not have a currency of its own.

It will have to apply for help from those whom they have nothing in common and that is when solidarity will be tested. If the Scottish want independence from the UK, an entity of which they have been part since the 1700s; if the free market Catalans of Spain want to break off from the Fascists in Madrid; if the Northern Irish want nothing to do with the Southern Irish, then who thought Greece with its distinct language, customs, and history had anything in common with Stockholm, Paris and Warsaw?

The point here is, do not let your leaders sell you the mumbo-jumbo of pan this and pan that. It does not exist! No one in Europe speaks Greek. No one in Europe knows the name of the Greek national food.

For the overwhelming mass of Europeans, Greece exists for tourism purposes – go to one of its leading spots Myrtos beach, drink gallons of wine, have sex with the local girls and then hurry back to Frankfurt and Glasgow until the next year. End of story! Same applies to Africa. I am here to tell all Ghanaians on this site that we have absolutely nothing in common with the Cameroonians or Djibouti. Thus, all should pray that we are never poured into a soup in which Ghanaian economic fortunes rest on the consent of someone in Yaounde.

Believe me, that will be the day all hell breaks loose since he will make decisions based on his financial bottom line and nothing else. He cares not for the residents of that fetid den of cat-sized rats, lice and flies called Chorkor; he has no link with the unemployed of Asawase; he does not know a single galamsey operator in Huni Valley!

Not surprisingly, now that the Greeks are squirming, asking for debt relief or an injection of Euros, Frau Merkel of Germany is telling them to get lost.

What you must do is slash public sector wage bills, shut down state nurseries, cut pensions, and charge exorbitant fees at government hospitals to save enough to pay what you owe.

Now Merkel is not a nasty person- she is just realistic. She has no emotional attachment to Greece. Her loyalty is to the German banks and bondholders, not to the 75 year-old toothless fishermen of Athens.

The Greek government should have thought of this when it went into the Euro singing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, (supposed to be Europe’s national anthem). Now reality is hitting home right where it hurts. There is no sorrow anywhere in Europe for the Greeks – people just want their money back and nothing else.

The future for Greece is bleak, but the world needed a reminder about economic and political folly. Greece is thus the sacrificial lamb. I am glad that this is going on lest Africans think the Euro is a success and decides to start merging currencies.

In such circumstances, it is likely that South Africa and Nigeria will dominate the new currency. Since they owe us absolutely nothing by way of a living, in the event of a financial crises they will act like the Germans and tell us to slash our welfare budget and pay what we owe with the money saved.

The plight of Greece bathes me with joy as it serves to prevent Africans leaders from pursuing another brainless folly.

Happy days are here again!