Greece bailout talks were postponed on Friday to Saturday, then Saturday to Sunday, then Sunday to Monday, then Monday to Tuesday. They have been postponed again, this time for a reason that makes perfect sense "Political Suicide".
The New Work Times reports Greece Puts Off Decision on Austerity Measures Amid a Strike Protesting Them
As thousands of Greeks walked off the job in a general strike on Tuesday to protest stringent new austerity measures, there was a growing sense that the country was reaching a critical point in its efforts to survive the debt crisis.
Greek political leaders postponed for yet another day a decision on an austerity package — including 20-percent cuts to base pay for workers in private companies and a loosening of public sector job protections — in exchange for the billions in loans Athens needs to prevent a default in March. With elections looming as soon as April, the parties fear that they are essentially being told to commit political suicide to save the country.
If that indeed is the case, analysts here say, it is not clear what will replace them, making Greece a potential laboratory for a volatile mix of austerity, populism and social unrest.
Not that the old order, widely derided as corrupt and inefficient, is likely to be deeply mourned.
For most Greek voters, the two larger parties participating in the fragile tripartite coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos — the Socialist Party and the center-right New Democracy — were already drained of political capital before the debt crisis by decades of self-interest and corruption. That has now been capped by two years of unrelenting austerity that has hurt most Greeks but has ultimately failed to revive the system, or even change it in any significant way.
With unemployment at 19 percent, businesses closing, credit scarce and the proposed new wage cuts expected to further decimate the shrinking middle class, the hard left and extreme right are rising.
With Greek popular anger at the country’s foreign lenders rising — a German flag was burned in front of Parliament at a demonstration on Tuesday — the Socialists and New Democracy are treading a fine line: They want to push back against the troika enough to regain some political capital — and keep more Greeks from falling into poverty — but not push hard enough to precipitate a default.
If the Greek political leaders do not agree to accept the new austerity measures in the coming days, Greece will run out of time to complete a broader deal for the volunta