Clenched fists, Marxist songs and defiant joy on streets of Athens
IT was loud and very passionate and the echoes should reverberate to Brussels, Berlin and beyond.
Central Athens came to a standstill last night as thousands of Greek anti-austerity voters poured in to celebrate an apparently emphatic rejection of the EU’s conditions for a new bailout package.
Thousands of government supporters gathered in Syntagma Square in front of parliament – where vendors set up stalls to sell kebabs, sandwiches, whistles and flags – waving Greek flags and chanting ‘Oxi, oxi’ (‘No, No’).
The result was hailed by one hard- Left figure in Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza party as a ‘political earthquake’. He was not far wrong.
In Stadiou Street on the immediate approaches to the square, a column of hundreds if not thousands sang traditional revolutionary songs. ‘I will take my gun,’ they roared, some making clenched fist salutes. More arrived waving red flags and chanting ‘People don’t bow down.’
Figures from Greece’s old political families who had run the country for so long as a cabal were described as ‘terrorists’. Marchers of all ages jumped and shouted in unison ‘anti-capitalist’.
Nassos Theodoridis, a 46year-old lawyer and member of Syriza waved a party flag as he and hundreds of others marched into the square chanting ‘Oxi!’
He said: ‘It is an amazing day not only for Greece but for Europe. It shows the end of austerity. And a triumph for democracy. For the first time in decades the government has listened to the people.’
In the background Spanish activists waved their own flags and chanted the slogan of Marxist revolutionary Che Gue-
vara ‘Hasta la victoria siempre! (Until victory, always)’ Drums beat. Motor scooter riders sounded their horns. The noise grew ever more euphoric.
Milena, a history professor, told me she was ‘happy and proud.’
She added: ‘The Greeks do not want to be a German protectorate. We are very well aware that the Germans want to overthrow a democratically elected government.
‘But we think that the result gives our government the necessary negotiating powers to defend our people. We will support them to the end.’
On social media, the slogan ‘Je suis Greece’ was trending. The phrase was borrowed from the ‘Je suis Charlie’ adopted as a show of solidarity by free- dom of speech supporters following the terror attacks in on the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris in January.
Last night supporters of Greece’s radical left Syriza government were tweeting the slogan with fervour.
One, Niall Mooney, wrote: ‘#greferendum #JesuisGreece. It’s time the people of Europe said enough.’ Andy Jackson added: # JeSuisGreece #SayNo #MonTheGreece.’
Times columnist Tim Montgomerie said: ‘In mishandling Greece, EU has shown dysfunctionality... No vote should shake Brussels to its foundations’. Another tweet read: ‘It’s really wonderful that the country which invented democracy is enabling its people to decide their own future path’.