This bit from Ballast’s interview with Kouvalakis is important:
Some people suggest that Tsipras is buying time, and waiting for the Spanish general elections in November in order to have Pablo Iglesias’s support – that he is counting on a Podemos victory. Do you think that’s credible?
This type of argument is obviously false. In signing this agreement, Greece has been subjected to a straitjacket far worse that which the previous memorandums imposed. It is an institutional mechanism for putting the country under supervision and dismembering its sovereignty. It is not simply a matter of a list of very harsh austerity measures, as the naïve might imagine, but also means structural reforms that will reshape the core of the state apparatus: the Greek government is effectively losing control of the main levers of state power. The tax system will become a so-called ‘independent’ institution; in fact it is passing into the Troika’s hands. A budgetary policy council is being established, with the authority to impose automatic budget cuts if there is the least sign of Greece not meeting the surplus targets fixed in the memorandums. The statistics agency is also going to be ‘independent’, which in reality means that it will turn into an apparatus for the real-time surveillance of public policies – an apparatus directly controlled by the Troika. And all of the public assets that it is considered possible to privatise have been placed under the control of a body run by the Troika.
Now lacking in any control over their budgetary and monetary policy, Greek governments of any coloration will now be deprived of any means of action. The only thing that will remain under the control of the Greek state is the repressive apparatus. And we can clearly see that it is beginning to be used like it was before; that is, in order to repress social mobilisations.
Of course you can always end this sort of thing as long as you still control the police and military. But it does mean that any transition will be a bloody mess: You have to re-seize control, the people in the ministries aren’t likely to be loyal to you, you have to figure out who is loyal and fire the rest, then you have to bring in new people and try to implement your plan. It’s widely stated that the Greek civil service is corrupt, but this civil service will be disloyal.
Those who call this a coup are right. Once upon a time Germans had to fight to conquer Greece. Not this time.
The rest of the interview is worth reading: Kouvalakis notes that Syriza under Tsirpas went in without any backup plan in the event that “perhaps the Troika won’t give us a good deal just because we ask nicely and make good arguments.” Many people in Syriza thought this was a terrible idea, they were all overruled.
Tsirpas keeps looking worse and worse.
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