Yanis Varoufakis was the guest in the studio of the Voice of Greece, on the broadcasting program “Take Your Time”, with Prokopis Angelopoulos. The secretary of MeRA 25, professor of finance and former minister in the first government of the SYRIZA, spoke about the Greek expatriates, describing himself as one of them. He talked about the years he lived abroad, how he found himself in Australia, about his daughter from his first marriage, who still lives there, his experience as a radio producer on SBS Australia, and also about his decision to return to Greece. “I never regretted it,” he said, describing how difficult it was, however, for a man who had left Greece when he was 17 to return in his 40s, to work at the University of Athens and, suddenly, face the monster that is Greek Bureaucracy.
He remembered his early years as a professor, in the early 2000s, his speeches on the issues of the Greek Economy, the discussions he had, since then, with people of Politics who consulted him, from all political areas, but also the alarm that he had sounded about the Greek debt and the possibility of bankruptcy, which he had argued from the beginning that Greece should not be afraid of. The secretary of MeRA 25 spoke about his decision to get involved in Politics, the split with the SYRIZA government, and the way in which he could discuss the possibility of post-elections cooperation. He made it clear that for this to happen there would have to be a pre-election discussion on an agreement on specific positions and proposals about each party’s program, “seven critical points” as he says, an invitation which, as he said, he has extended to Mr. Tsipras, without response, for “specific reasons that will be discussed after the elections”. “It is a truly democratic process which those who insist on post-election partnerships deprive others of,” he said.
In the end, Yanis Varoufakis spoke about the debate in the parliament on the bill for the Greek National Information Service and expressed his sadness at the level of parliamentary dialogue, which, as he stressed, “is not a dialogue but a series of monologues.”
Finally, he talked about the topic of the week, the shooting that seriously injured a 16-year-old Romani, and he pointed out the racism that exists in Greek Society against this social group: “After my speech, yesterday, in parliament, where I said that Romani lives matter, inspired by Black lives matter, I received at least a thousand attacks on my personal Twitter account from Greek accounts saying “even one less of them is better” revealed the secretary of the MERA 25 party. Yanis Varoufakis even talked about “statutory racism inside the Police” but also about racism on the part of the State itself. He revealed, in fact, that the guarantee of the Greek State for the mortgage loans given to Romani people before the Crisis, to help them escape ghettoization, has now decreased and these loans had the same fate as the rest of the loans, which are being exploited by banks and bank funds.
Listen to Yanis Varoufakis’ interview on the Voice of Greece, with Prokopis Angelopoulos on the broadcasting program “Take Your Time.”