Marianno Rajoy in the middle of his slush fund scandal, which he is talking his way out of. Silvio Berlusconi expected to be let off taxation fraud. Evangelos Venizilos, shielded tax dodgers by stuffing the so called Lagarde list in his pocket. And probably many more that we either suspect or don’t know enough about yet.
But what do these particular three have in common? Why, they can’t, they simply can’t be held into account because that would… destabilise the neoliberal agenda being rammed down Europe’s throat!!!
Rajoy has a clear cut majority in Madrid and he has shown exceptional zeal in screwing his people and his country to the satisfaction of neoliberal dogma. Why, he has achieved an unemployment rate of 26%! Not as good as Greece, but good enough to keep those unacceptable labour costs down.
Silvio Berlusconi has not behaved nearly as well as the troika neoliberal dogma would like, which is why The Frau contrived to summarily dismiss him amid sneer at with her then side kick, whatsis name? The one already consigned to oblivion? Yes. Him. Sarkozy. But the thing is, if he is convicted, then oh dear! What will happen to the Italian government coalition? We cannot risk any destabilisation! Especially not in Italy, now can we?
And last but not least, perhaps the darling of the troika. Venizelos (who hasn’t a clue about economics, but then nor, it appears does the troika) was the previous Minster of Finances and a greater success than he there couldn’t have been. He was the one to introduce the extortion tax. The exorbitant tax on houses, paid through the electricity bill on pain of having your current cut off.
The troika are so pleased with this catastrophic and barbaric tax (well they would be, wouldn’t they?) that it wants to make it permanent. Given half a chance this is precisely what the current Greek Quisling government will do. But in addition to that, Venizelos also set the foundations for the unemployment to soar to 27% and counting, thereby ensuring cheap, just about slave labour.
So even though the party he is pretending to lead has dropped from 44% in 2009 to somewhere between 5% and 7% now, he is absolutely essential! He props up the Stournaras regime ostensibly headed by the fool Samaras, which has turned out to be the best, most loyal troika government in the whole of Europe.
Therefore though Papapconstantinou, the Fin Min before him has been rightly arraigned for shielding tax dodgers, Venizelos has not and will not be as long as the troika regime reigning in a harsh totalitarioan way in Europe has its way.
But remember, it never was true that “there is no alternative!”. There is always an alternative and it’s about time an alternative to this vicious, not to say ineffective in its own terms at that too, neoliberal iron fisted ideology storms in to replace it. Oh, and not one single truth, but debate over many.