Tension and euphoria as Greek MPs sworn in

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/greek-mps-sworn-in-parliament

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They began to pull up outside the Athens parliament earlier than expected at a little before 10am. The big cars belonged to foreign dignitaries determined to get the best seats in the house for the blockbuster about to begin. The small cars belonged to those who were starring in it: Greek MPs born and bred in the age of austerity.

Then came the jeeps: silver vehicles with blacked-out windows ferrying the neo-fascists who had been granted special dispensation to attend after being elected to the Greek parliament from behind bars.

Nobody was taking any chances. When everyone had screeched into the building’s subterranean garage by a little before 11am, the doors were slammed shut. It was showtime.

Like most parliaments, the Greek chamber is smaller than it seems. This only augments the drama for those watching from the boxes above. In addition to the balding pates, twitching feet and plunging cleavage, the observer is blessed with a superb view of the body language of the men and women in whose hands Greece’s future has been entrusted.

Five minutes before Archbishop Ieronymos appeared for the ornate taking of the oath – for this was what all 300 MPs had assembled for – the body language ranged from tense to euphoric.

In his ill-fitting suit, hands clasped tightly before him, Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s new prime minister, looked unmistakably pensive. Antonis Samaras, the man he replaced when his radical left Syriza party stormed to victory 10 days ago, looked tired and shaken.

Behind him to his left, Golden Dawn MPs – many brought to the House in those jeeps – looked angry and suspicious, even if Eleni Zaroulia, the MP wife of the imprisoned party leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, did a good job stroking her husband’s back. And to the left of them almost everyone else was too busy laughing, hugging, joking and air-kissing to notice much at all.

From the outbreak of Europe’s great economic crisis, history has been made in this chamber. The men and women who have sat on its benches, debating the belt-tightening measures asked of Greece in return for aid, have had an all too often uncomfortable say in its every twist and turn. As Ieronymos raised his golden cross and the long beards around him broke into song, history was in the making again.

Tsipras’ two-party government is the first to be dominated by the hard left. Close to half of the house’s 300 members have never been elected before. And Syriza’s deputies – many self-described Marxists – take contrariness seriously, from breaking the rules when it comes to wearing ties, to ditching decorum when it comes to taking oaths.

On Thursday they did not disappoint. Most turned up open-collared and, when others crossed themselves, the leftists kept their arms firmly to their sides. In a replay of their investiture last week, the vast majority broke with tradition to take a civic oath, pledging allegiance not to God but to the constitution.

In his salon barely a corridor away from the chamber, Giorgos Kakayiannis, the parliament’s in-house barber, confessed to being a little taken aback by it all. In his 30 years of attending to the serious business of cutting Greek politicians’ hair, he had never seen anything like it.

“And as you can imagine,” he said, straightening his white tunic, “I have seen and heard it all. But civic oaths and no ties, now that’s a first. Who knows where we are headed, if any of this is going to end up being good or bad? For me, there can only be a solution if both sides, Europe and Greece, come to a compromise.”

Is that possible? Barely two weeks into this newest of new Greek governments, the jury is still out. Along the marble corridors of Athens’ three-storey parliament, what is sure is that the nervousness is real. Governing MPs may indeed have an anti-austerity swagger, but whether or not they ultimately cave into the pressure of placating the creditors keeping the debt-stricken country afloat, only time will tell.

The European Central Bank’s bombshell decision late on Wednesday to no longer accept Greek bonds as collateral for loans – less than three weeks before emergency bailout funding officially expires – has undoubtedly raised the temperature. So, too, has Berlin’s refusal to give an inch.

“Greece won’t take orders any more,” Tsipras defiantly declared as he addressed his parliamentary group for the first time after the swearing-in ceremony. “Greece is no longer the miserable partner who listens to lectures to do its homework. It cannot be blackmailed. Greece has its own voice.”

As thousands of anti-austerity protesters piled into Syntagma Square in the shadow of the parliament on Thursday night, it was clear that the battle lines had been drawn.