This coalition has chosen to blacken Greece’s psyche, literally. Evidenced by black television screens-no signal.

The closure of the Greek national broadcaster ERT on June 11 by the Samaras coalition government in Greece has led to a number of reactions and questions asked, including the question as to why this has had to happen.
The national broadcaster is being kept live on air though – two months later – with support from the EBU (European Broadcasting Union), who amongst other things allow a multiplicity of opinion in a pluralistic democracy.
The horror of the closure of ERT is being felt across the world as the Greek diaspora – including the many in aged care institutions – cannot watch their favourite Greek language programs and their links with their ancestral homeland has been severed overnight.
The now worker-run television station has opened its doors to the people day and night over the last few months, with special events for children and free concerts every evening since its closure, literally on its door-step in the forecourt of the ΕRΤ building.
Thousands have marched and many are still marching in Greece. Τhe reaction around the world regarding this dictatorial, anti-democratic action has been unprecedented.
Is the reduced government, now comprised of the two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, listening? Obviously not. It is a sad commentary, paraphrasing the late, former PASOK politician/actress, Melina Mercouri: “Culture is the essence of the Greek soul.” This coalition has chosen to blacken Greece’s psyche, literally. Evidenced by black television screens – no signal.
The matter has been taken to the highest Court in the land with the help of the Union POSPERT. The decision “requiring ΕRΤ to remain open and continue working”, whilst re-structuring presumably takes place, however, has not being implemented by the Greek government.
Rather, in defiance of the hitherto mentioned decision, it has taken exactly one month later for piecemeal government broadcasting to resume under a different name and logo – whilst the former employees commandeer the ΕRΤ building and continue their broadcasting, still.
What sort of broadcaster could a desperate failing government construct, especially when it is not dissenting from advice given by one of its Troika masters, the IMF (International Monetary Fund)? Even when this same master admitted publicly last month, that it has faltered with the implementation of the Greek bail-out program over the last three years?
The answer would be an extremely censored national broadcaster and a ‘re-structured’ one, of course. Something that most Greeks are not buying. When every Greek household is already taxed at 4.225 euros per month. A tax most Greeks both here and abroad are willing to pay.
ERT was making a 50 million euro profit in 2012 and the court case revealed the broadcaster was not financed from the national budget. This is why the stakeholders are asking themselves and their government where their money has gone. Once again, this government has put more than their foot in it.
In the face of such curious mismanagement, the traditional role of the national broadcaster is as the trusted entity uniting the country, including the majority Grecophone diaspora. By its very presence, imbuing a uniting sense of national identity and belonging to a scattered homeland – through ERT – chronicled daily. These very people consider this to be an act of war by this government against its own citizens. How would Australians feel if they lost their ‘Aunty-ABC’? What does this reveal concerning independent reporting?
Presently, it’s through this ‘pirate’ broadcaster we are given extraordinary insights into the life and world of contemporary Greece and her plight, along with ‘P.I.G.S.’ (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) countries. Here caught with their ‘snouts in the trough’, and every stereotype imaginable, thrown in with the mud, the term as first defined by British media commentary. It appears loss of identity is the first casualty of ‘structural reform’ on a grand scale.
The national Greek broadcaster, who previously lost two morning presenters only months ago, censored by this very regime, is now unshackled from its government master and has decided, as one eloquent employee drily remarked: “Θα το γλεντήσω μες’ απ’ τη πίκρα μου”, meaning ‘to make revelry through my bitterness’ – sound familiar?
Round-the-clock broadcasting is continuing including people’s fora representing, refreshingly, a wide variety of views, in their respective fields, allowing uncensored discussion conducted in a completely professional atmosphere.
A discussion that reveals again and again that pensioners are living on a 30 per cent reduced pension, people cannot meet their health needs because of the effects of the closure of 14 hospitals, a discussion that mentions the high suicide rate including that of many elderly who do not want to be a burden on their families.
Not to mention the highest unemployment rates in Europe, including youth unemployment over 60 per cent, or the fact that the brain-drain from Greek universities is estimated at 42 per cent, in other words 42 per cent of graduates are presently leaving the country in search of work.
The outcome of the ‘austerity measures’ as laid down by the aptly named, three-headed ‘Troika’ (the European Central Bank (ECB), The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission (EC), have not only demoralised and humiliated ordinary Greek citizens with extraordinary ferocity though.
They have proceeded in inducing precisely the most unstable recipe for investment and development regarding the country’s infrastructure. It has become the veritable underdog chasing its tail, with wage-earners and small businesses carrying, disproportionately, the sinking weight of the austerity measures. Whilst those who are listed for investigation for possible tax-evasion have their names emerging, then disappearing, then another emerging version again, and the game goes on.
For many Greek people and diaspora around the world, the closure of the national broadcaster is within living memory of the Greek junta closing the national broadcaster, when they first took power in 1967, in order to ‘re-structure’ programming-for its people, tantamount to a time of war. That is why the present continued ‘illegal’ operation of the Greek broadcaster is seen as a democratic struggle for Greek peoples around the world, anti-Troika and anti-globalization. This is why the late July anniversary of the fall of the Greek junta was celebrated amongst others with organised events on the promulgating political party extremes.
This is why it is no coincidence that the Greek neo-Nazi party, Χρυσή Αυγή – Golden Dawn, has almost doubled its vote between the last two Greek national elections using nationalist sentiment with such slogans as “Αίμα, ψυχή, Χρυσή Αυγή” – “blood, spirit, golden dawn”, “Η Ελλάδα ανοίκει στους ‘Ελληνες”- “Greece belongs to the Greeks”, dressed in their all-black attire.
All this in the wake of the Greek government signing the Dublin 2 agreement, 2003. A regulation that stipulates that the first EU member state that a migrant enters should be the one to examine his or her asylum application, meaning that other member states regularly send asylum claimants back to Greece, as the country is often the first EU country a migrant steps foot in.
Greece argues that this puts an undue burden on it as well as other EU border states such as Spain, Italy, Cyprus and Malta but no one is willing to listen at this stage.
The Greek experience, as partially described in this article, makes someone wonder as to how Australians might have responded if similar issues or issues of that scale were also taking place in Australia.
*Mersina Tonys-Soulos is a PhD Candidate at the School of Politics, History and International Relations at Macquiry University, NSW.