I passed by the Greek Embassy in Ta’ Xbiex yesterday and I saw no crowd of Maltese patriots shouting outside “Give us back our €89 million”.

But a few miles away, in Valletta, the usual rent-a-crowd that protests against anything American, or Israeli, joined by a few Greeks living their country’s angst in (hopefully) comfortable exile, told the passers-by that the Greeks should vote ‘No’ today.

Being comfortable here, they did not bother going home to vote ‘No’.

The past week has been a traumatic one for the Greeks, excluding those who have already taken up residence abroad and/or squirreled away their bank deposits abroad.

Otherwise, the Greeks back home saw first the banks remaining closed, (later opening only for elderly pensioners without a bank card) then ATMs restricted to €60 per person, per day. Even so, ATMs may dry up before referendum day, which is today: the banks just do not have that amount of cash available.

As for the rest of the country, it has simply ground to a halt. It is now a rigorously cash-only country, for those who have cash, as long as that lasts. Companies trade in cash. Imports and exports cannot move with such controls. And it is a myth – not to say a lie – that bank controls will end tomorrow, Monday. In Cyprus, such controls lasted two years and there are still some controls outstanding, after all this time. And Greece is not Cyprus.

Over the past week or so, I have read with increasing perplexity contributions by eminent economists such as Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz, all uniformly Eurosceptic, caustic about the EU’s aims, decrying the enforced austerity and arguing that Germany itself in the post-war years, as well as France, did not get the same austerity treatment but, on the contrary, the Marshall Plan.

There is a lot of truth in this, and it certainly deserves consideration. But in the actual Greek situation, all this is out of context. We have a country that accepted commitments (under Samaras) which it did not honour. The new government, elected on a commitment to reverse those commitments, did keep its commitment to its electorate but wanted to remove the country’s commitments to the rest of the EU which had, twice, come to its aid with considerable sums of money, which now look gone for ever.

Time and again, as ministers flew to Brussels and summits were held, the Greeks kept coming up with different pieces of paper which contrasted with each other and which were either woolly or rhetorical or expected to be taken seriously when it was patently obvious that they were not serious at all.

Then, after the European Council took time off from talking about immigration and other subjects, the Greek prime minister went home and unilaterally announced today’s referendum without even consulting his fellow prime ministers.

Now, sensing the game is lost, the leaders of the Greek government are attacking the EU and the lenders as ‘terrorists’, as out to humiliate Greece, etc – and this is apart from the personal attacks on Angela Merkel and that ogre of ogres, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

It is simply not true that, tomorrow, with the results out and regardless of whether Yes or No has won, the negotiations will resume. The situation has now gone way too far for that.

Meanwhile, as explained already, the banks will run out of money, if they have not done so already. And to reopen the faucets of help from the ECB or the IMF will require further negotiation.

Who will be negotiating? If Yes wins, the Tsipras government will still be in office but its power will have been swept away by the popular vote. The proper way would be to call an election, so expect a further delay.

The Yes group, on the other hand, is deeply divided by personal and other animosities. At the Yes final mass meeting on Friday, the grass-roots organisers refused to appear with Samaras or any other leader who reminded voters of the past profligate alternating governments.

On the other hand, there was a lot of resonating and uplifting nationalistic arguments from the No camp. After all, the old among them had been under Nazi occupation in the war and it was terrible: the wounds are still there, hence the animosity towards Germany.

Whatever one may say about the outer contours of the whole argument, no country has suffered such a double whammy of recession and austerity on top of that. The options if the No vote wins have been summarised, maybe unjustly, as choosing Grexit.

There is no doubt that Grexit may be the solution for Greece, if not for the Eurozone, but under two conditions. First, the immediate effect will be far worse than even the present dramatic situation. Secondly, Grexit can work only if the Greeks understand the need to get off their backsides and start working, really start working. And tackling corruption and the oligarchs which the present government said it would do, and then did nothing about.

Which is why I think the Yes vote will win. For all the wrong reasons.

Meanwhile, people will continue to suffer. Have a look at this picture of an elderly man sitting outside a bank, crying.

This is what AFP said about him: We now know more about the man, who is pensioner Giorgos Chatzifotiadis.

 Giorgos Chatzifotiadis had queued up at three banks in Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki on Friday in the hope of withdrawing a pension on behalf of his wife, but all in vain.

When he was told at the fourth that he could not withdraw his €120, it was all too much and he collapsed in tears.

The 77-year-old told AFP that he had broken down because he “cannot stand to see my country in this distress.

“That’s why I feel so beaten, more than for my own personal problems,” Chatzifotiadis said.

The image of him sitting outside the bank, openly crying in despair, with his savings book and identity card on the floor, was captured by an AFP photographer illustrating how ordinary Greeks are suffering during the country’s debt crisis.

Recounting how he had gone from bank to bank in a futile attempt to collect his wife’s pension, Chatzifotiadis said when he was told at the fourth “that I could not get the money, I just collapsed”.

Both he and his wife, like many Greeks in the north of the country, had spent several years in Germany where he “worked very hard” in a coal mine and later a foundry.

But Chatzifotiadis feels he can do little to change the situation, and he is not even sure if he would be able to vote at Sunday’s referendum on whether to accept international creditors’ bailout conditions.

European leaders have warned that a ‘No’ vote would also mean no to the eurozone.

Pointing out that the polling station is 80 kilometres away, Chatzifotiadis said: “I have no money to go there, unless perhaps if my children would take me in their car.”

 

[email protected]