Greece's Impotent Referendum

        Talking about “referendums”, one should comment upon the newest one from Greece. That did receive much international attention.

         Some 61% of Greeks voted on July 5 against a proposed arrangement by international negotiators to “solve” the financial mess that their country had fallen into. The prime minister of the Greeks, recently elected, Alexis Tsipiras, had urged his people to vote against it, and they did. The idea of having such referendum had been introduced only a few days earlier, its haste necessitated by the urgency of the Greek financial problems. The fact that the proposed “settlement’ had been passed by as useless, in the interim, did not faze the promoters of the vote.

         Almost immediately afterwards, the PM was required to back down to further restrictions. The vote did nothing to alter the needs or requirements of the majority of the other European leaders who were trying to rescue Greece from the financial mess that their previous years’ transgressions had gotten them into. Rather obviously a vote from the Greek people could not legally affect in any way the views and opinions of other states, but at least the PM did clearly gather the views of his citizens.

        The Economist magazine in its July11-17 issue analyzed the results. It showed that the views of males and females were substantially the same – about 40% in favour, 60% opposed. Those aged 18 to 24 were some 20% in favour, with 80% opposed, contrasted to those 65 years and older, where some 55% were in favour, with 45% opposed. 

         It was pretty clearly an opinion which substantiated the ideal of democracy – where the majority opinion is supposed to prevail.

         However, it does not fit within the prescription which I would suggest is the only really proper referendum – one initiated by the people not by the government. That sort of referendum, ultimately binding upon the government jurisdiction about which the issue relates, more effectively translates into majority, democratic views.

         But, at least, the idea of obtaining the views of the people from the country which invented “democracy” is certainly an improvement over the most common manner of establishing laws, that is, by an edict from a leader or approved by the few elected representatives.

         Too bad that in Greece the elected representatives, over the past several years, had let the country fall into such a financial mess from which its citizens could not, even by their recent voting, lead it out.