The victory of Alexis Tsipras’s party, Syriza, in Greece raised eyebrows. Ivan Martin asks Malta’s Greek community whether they supported the far-Left leader’s pledge to end austerity or whether his radical approach would be his Achilles’ heel.
Maritime engineer Kassandros Demetriou is unruffled by the tough talk of Syriza’s leader and is convinced it is nothing more than political bravado.
“Just you wait and see... I mean, if you gave me a lot of money, would you just forget about it and act like nothing happened? What rubbish. Nothing is going to change,” the 43-year-old said.
Mr Demetriou has been living in Malta for the past five years, driven out of his home in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, by the crippling economic crash that broke the Greek banks in 2009.
We need a new way of looking at the Greek problem. I’m glad Alexis Tsipras has spoken out for the people
The country has since received more than €350 billion from international lenders to keep it afloat. The loans, however, led to hefty repayments and unpopular austerity measures with the country regularly facing €3.5 billion repayments to the International Monetary Fund, along with €3 billion regular repayments to the European Central Bank.
Malta’s exposure to Greece comes in two parts: a €50 million bilateral loan and €138 million as guarantees to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), set up as a temporary rescue mechanism in 2010.
“The promises Tsipras is making are ridiculous and it is not fair to have even made them in the first place. That’s what I think and that’s why I didn’t vote for him,” Mr Demetriou said.
Although Mr Tsipras claims he wants to keep Greece in the eurozone, he has also talked about dumping most of the conditions attached to its hefty bailouts.
Having promised to reverse cuts in the minimum wage and in public spending, he has outright heralded an end to austerity, a pledge that seems to sit uncomfortably with Greece’s continuing membership of the single currency.
“I think we’ll be worse off if we leave the eurozone. What happens then? What happens if we aren’t part of the EU? Aren’t we still receiving money from them? I think that’s something to really think about first,” Greek national Jennifer Vella said.
Although she moved to Birkirkara from her family home in Mykonos back in the 1980s, Ms Vella regularly returns to Greece with her Maltese husband. She hopes her country will not forget the support it received from the international community when the crisis was at its worse.
“I understand the impact the austerity measures have had, believe me. My family was hit really hard. But any changes should definitely not be rushed and cannot be done alone,” she said.
The stifling repayments saw much of Athens’ bustling Agoras boarded up and carefree shoppers replaced by protesters lamenting the downsizing of public spending.
“You couldn’t live in Athens when the crisis happened. I lost my job and so did my husband,” said Agafya Papadakis, a university graduate who is in her late 20s and has been in Malta since 2011.
Unlike Mr Demetriou and Ms Vella, Ms Papadakis welcomes Mr Tsipras’s approach and said her family voted for him in last week’s snap elections.
“We need a new way of looking at the Greek problem. I’m glad Mr Tsipras has spoken out for the people,” Ms Papadakis said, lamenting not being able to vote for Mr Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, Syriza, herself.
However, not all Maltese-Greeks are hung up over not being able to cast a vote.
Twenty-year-old Davos Logo said he had left Greece with his parents three years ago and had no ambition of returning at all, let alone to cast his ballot.
“I don’t really consider myself Greek but more European. The system back there is so messed up. Would you want to be involved,” he asked.