January 21, 2016•Update: January 21, 2016
By Vasiliki Mitsiniotou
ATHENS
Protests have spread throughout Greece, from the city of Komotini in the north to the island of Crete in the south since Wednesday, against major tax and pension reforms.
Athens was paralyzed for the second time in a few days Thursday, as about 6,000 people, according to the police - among them, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, judges - headed to the Ministry of Labor early in the afternoon.
Major labor and civil servant federations have criticized draft pension reforms, deeming them dangerous and unsustainable for a country mired in austerity measures, and called to massively participate in a PanHellenic strike on Feb. 4.
Austerity policies promoted by leftist Syriza for the past six months have been unpopular. The government has been trying to implement policies from bailout agreement signed in July in order to push for debt relief in the near future. But the latest tax and pension reform, which includes increases in social security taxes, has visibly pushed many to protest.
"The bill proposal should be submitted to official bodies, after it had been discussed with social forces and Greek people. We will fight until the end of this unjust, undemocratic the anti-development blueprint,” said Kostas Lourantos, president of the Panhellenic Pharmaceutical Association, to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.
Farmers have also taken to the streets and have organized three major roadblocks across Greece in Mikrothives, Nikaia and Tempe Thursday, with 6,000 tractors lined up in various areas.
Meanwhile, at the customs office at the roadblock organized since Jan. 15 at the Greek border with Bulgaria, there are more than 1,300 tractors and agricultural vehicles. Sailors have also made their way to the Navy Ministry Thursday while ships remain at ports for 48 hours.
On Wednesday, tension rose in the northern city of Komotini as farmers surrounded the prefecture building for more than 12 hours, blocking Minister of Rural Development Vangelis Apostolou from exiting, causing the police to use tear gas.
According to the draft pension reform, the vast majority of insured farmers will see their annual social security taxes gradually increase from 946 euros to 1,544 euros in 2019.
The economic crisis has been hitting Greece for six years now, boosting unemployment to 27 percent.
“I worked all my life just to see my pension cut several times all these years, from 1,500 euros to 680 euros today” Giorgos, a retired car engineer, said during Thursday’s protest in Athens. “I also have to pay more for my medicine now and support my family at the same time, this is killing us.”
“What is going to happen to us, I really don’t know”, says pensioner Maria Gotsi. “I voted twice for Tsipras but he has done the opposite of all he had promised, brought us all down” she said.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was widely popular back in July. He had urged Greeks to vote against austerity measures at the referendum held at the time, just a little before the last bailout agreement with the country’s creditors was struck.
The Greek premier has been at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos since Wednesday and, despite the social upheaval, sounded optimistic. "I think 2016 will be the year that Greece will astonish the world economic community,” he said on Bloomberg TV on Thursday. "I think we are at a critical point, a critical point of recovery," he added, emphasizing the need to complete the talks about the evaluation of the Greek program with the EU and the IMF.
