It is one of the days that marked the recent Greek history, the day the then Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou from Kastelorizo started talking about the memorandums and that was only the beginning, we had no idea of the social disaster that was coming and basically it had already come I was still a high school student when the sermon was delivered and I still remember the unprecedented feelings of sitting in front of the television and trying to understand what exactly had happened, which of course both I and many others understood very well, as until 2018 these eight years were very hard. Among others, unemployment and economic exploitation had hit “red” which had, as expected, an impact on the psychology of the citizens.
Even the basic obligations could not be paid, the center in Athens had turned into a jungle and we all had a fear of what could happen even worse in the future. Everywhere you looked there was unhappiness and how can that not happen when you don’t know what to expect the next day. I can’t forget the first two years after graduating from University, the chapter “Finding a job” what was out there. In 2024 the social reality is better. The reality was grim and it was hard to come to terms with the new situation.
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What happened 14 years ago in Kastellorizo
It was April 23, 2010, when the then prime minister, Giorgos Papandreou, in a dramatic speech from the unsung town of Kastelorizo, announced that: “The Hellas calls for the activation of the support mechanism of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund”. The sermon began like this: “Yesterday, the figures for the true size of the 2009 deficit were announced. They reminded us all of the incomprehensible mistakes, omissions, criminal choices and storm of problems bequeathed to us by the previous government. We all inherited – the current Government and Greek people – a ship ready to sink. A country without prestige and credibility, which had lost the respect of even its friends and partners. An economy exposed to the mercy of questioning and the appetites of speculation. (…) We are on a difficult course, a new Odyssey for Hellenism. But now we know the way to Ithaca and have mapped the waters. Ahead of us is a journey with demands on all of us, but with a new collective consciousness and common effort we will get there safer, more confident, fairer, prouder.”
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The day after the sermon
A few months before the removal of Dominique Strauss-Kahn from his post as president of the International Monetary Fund, he had revealed that the terms for the agreement on Greece’s accession to the IMF had been being negotiated secretly with the Greek prime minister for months, while the official position of the Papandreou government was that an effort was being made to avoid IMF financing at all costs. The harsh measures of the first memorandum caused enormous popular anger and the imminent fall of the Papandreou government and its replacement by that of Loukas Papadimos in 2011.
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