← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
June 30, 2011
00:28:11
Now the Greek parliament's voted for austerity, large numbers of people working in the...
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You're listening to from our own correspondent from the BBC.
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You can also hear the World Service
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edition of the programme on the BBC iPlayer.
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But this is the latest program from
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Radio 4, introduced by Kate Ady.
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Today, redundancy looms for the bright young things who entrusted their future to the Greek state. Venezuelan security forces tunnel into a jail to help get the prisoners out. It's a happy 90th to the Chinese Communist Party. But what's become of those principles it set out with back in 1921? And football? Just a game. Tell that to the heartbroken fans of the River Plate Club in Argentina. The Greek Parliament is this morning resuming a debate on a controversial austerity programme after giving it approval in principle yesterday. The move was welcomed by the European Union as a vital step back from Greece defaulting on its debts. But there has been hostile public reaction to the proposed measures. The debate in Parliament has been taking place against a backdrop of strikes, protests and violent clashes with the police. Today, members of Parliament are going into detail about proposed tax hikes, pay cuts and privatisations. And tens of thousands of jobs are likely to go in the country's huge public sector. Manuela Saragossa is just back from Athens.
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Vangelis is no ordinary Greek. About 10 years ago, he did the unthinkable. He turned down a job at the Central bank of Greece, an employer widely seen as offering the best perks and privileges in the Greek public sector. So why did he say no? We're sitting at a bar on the rooftop of a hotel in central Athens. In the distance, Greece's most famous tourist attraction, the Acropolis, is lit up against a clear night sky. A warm evening breeze shifts the foam on his glass of beer. Vangelis looks out across the cluttered buildings that make up the Greek capital. After I got my acceptance letter, I called up the personnel department at the bank of Greece, he says. And I asked them, what will I be doing in my job there? Don't worry, they answered. We'll find you something to do. So I said, thank you, but no thank you. I won't be taking the job. They said I was crazy. They were really shocked. He grins. To understand just how shocking that decision was requires a quick profile of Greece's overstaffed public sector. Up until now, jobs in public institutions have been for life. Early retirement is common. Retirement packages are guaranteed and generous. About one in every four working people is believed to work for the state in one form or another. No one is quite sure about the exact figure yet. The Greek Public sector ranks as one of the world's most inefficient. Pay is generous in some departments, as one Greek businessman pointed out to me. A cleaner in the Ministry of Finance earns as much as a manager in other ministries. Greece's brightest young graduates all want to work in the civil service. I meet Nikos Sofianos, a Greek entrepreneur, at his wood flooring showroom on a hot sunny morning on the outskirts of Athens. His sales have slumped as the Greek economy drags itself through its debt crisis. He tells me the story of the 10 work placement interns he met when he used to sit on the board of an outfit called Invest in Greece, a body designed to encourage private investment. One day he invited the interns into his office. These were some of the best graduates in the country, he says. All of them clever, top of their class, good looking too. One by one, he asked them what they hoped to achieve in their careers. All of them, every single one, wanted a job in the public sector, he says. He shakes his head. I told them, you're crazy. Go out in the world, do something productive in the real economy. But they just weren't interested. It would be too easy to dismiss these young graduates as lazy or unambitious. The public sector's appeal as the employer of choice for Greeks has its roots in much darker places. It goes back to the influence of Andreas Papandreou, Greece's first socialist prime minister and the father of the current Prime Minister. George Papandreou senior won a landslide victory in the general elections of 1981. He wanted all those sidelined by the right wing establishment to share in the country's wealth. It meant bringing all those excluded from power after the 1946-1949 civil war and the dictatorship of the 60s and 70s into the warm and generous arms of the state. Under his rule, the number of jobs in the public sector grew, as did wages, pensions and perks. Supporters will argue it spawned a comfortable middle class among a people for whom the right wing killings and arrests of the post war era are still within living memory. Critics will say it spawned a monster, a public sector that dished out jobs and privileges as political favours, unshackled from economic reality and encouraging Greece to live way beyond its means. All of which brings us back to Vangelis as he drinks his beer at the bar on the hotel rooftop in Athens. He drains the last of his beer and picks at the deep fried halloumi nibbles. Vangelis tells me he supports efforts to reform the Greek economy, but he's no right winger. He understands Greek mistrust of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Both are now demanding that the country take the axe to a public sector that has allowed so many Greeks to put their violent past behind them. He turned down the job of the bank of Greece because he wants his country to move on from such dependency on the state. It's meant a smaller income in the private sector for him and far less job security. It's hard, he shrugs. But Greece needs to go through this period of austerity if it wants to become a modern state.
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And that's Manuela Saragossa. How to cut expenditure has become a preoccupation throughout Europe. There are suggestions that the European Parliament itself could be doing more. Some say that relocating those parliamentarians every month free from Brussels to the French city of Strasbourg for just a couple of days of meetings is no longer sustainable. It's simply too expensive. But the local community there doesn't want change, it says. There are good historical reasons for making their city a centre of European political activity. And anyway, they make good money from the MEPs. Mark Lebel's been to Strasbourg to sample opinions.
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Strasbourg is a picturesque city, taking a few hours out from reporting at the European Parliament building there I go for a look around the tram. Doors open at the Lyce Klebert Secondary School and I spot a student in dishevelled clothing and a scruffy beard lounging on a manicured lawn. We're at the centre of Europe, he declares when I approach him. Taken literally, he has a point. If the map of Europe is a dart board, Strasbourg's very close to the bullseye. But he means politically. The question I hear on everybody's lips is why his town has become a second, costly home to the European Parliament when there's a perfectly good one in Brussels. I ask the 16 year old if it's time for the EU to start saving money by reining back its work. Here, he answers with an impromptu lesson in history. It's the capital of Europe, he explains. It stemmed from when the French and the Germans were at war to gain control of Alsace and its capital, Strasbourg, he says, and adds, from our victory came the unification of Europe. I've heard it all before, but never with such passion. It's there so that we never forget what happened here, he tells me. I ask how important remembering the past is to him. Very, he responds. For me, for France, for the whole world. The student Louis Victor was four when the then French president Jacques Chirac opened the Grand Louise Weiss building the 400 million pound Colosseum esque Parliament is a gift from France. It's filled with 2,000 offices, a state of the art egg shaped debating chamber and a dazzling array of arguably quite wasteful round the clock lighting. But Louis hasn't seen any of it yet. He's been too busy at college and hanging out in the park to make the 10 minute tram ride to the Parliament. I ask if he'll visit it one day. He says he will, and I suggest that he could even work there. It's a good idea, he responds. And then, unprompted, he says, because of the money. Voila. I thought he might be interested in a job there for altruistic reasons, as he seemed to value the institution's historical and peacekeeping purpose. But he clearly has his wallet on his mind. It's perhaps no surprise, he's been told jobs there are well paid. It's been claimed from recent investigations into unpublished EU expenses that one late night party alone cost £66,000. Millions were reportedly spent on private jets for European leaders in just four years. Money spent on lorries too. Office paperwork is shuffled back and forth on over two dozen of them between Brussels and Strasbourg every month. One British Conservative MEP fumes at how the epic convoy regularly emits tonnes of carbon dioxide. And as he shows me his travelling trunk, it's one of more than 700 big plastic padlocked boxes the lorries deliver. He's rather ashamed to say his colleagues often supplement the files inside with clothes and personal belongings. The MEP believes it's like journeying to India in colonial times. And as the politicians move, so does a separate troupe of interpreters, aides, security guards and journalists. I see why some say it's a travelling circus. There are many meps fed up with all the juggling. They wish they could wave their magic wand and make Parliament disappear from Strasbourg. They'd conjure up another use for the building there, such as an EU university or to house another European Committee. But there are other people who are worried about the final curtain falling. Lee lives in Strasbourg's old fashioned Petit France district after leaving Laos 40 years ago. He owns a cute, colourful family run Thai restaurant which sits at the end of a cobbled street. To get there, I have to wait to cross a slim bridge set amongst ancient fortifications as it swivels to allow a long, low boat through the canal. Like crossing first, Lee's kitchen offers a respite from the city's famous bratwurst and sauerkraut on a Monday and Wednesday Night. One week in every month, as the European parliamentary circus hits town, there's a surge in interest for his excellent soups, samosas and fiery curries. He can't imagine life without the MEPs. Lee may notice one month next year when his takings drop. Some cunning MEPs have merged two sessions into the same week, cutting the number of monthly trips down by one. But the French and Luxembourg governments don't want change. They're appealing against the decision in court. It all adds up to more time for Lee to keep trading. It also gives young Louis a little longer to visit the parliament and to come to his own view about whether having a second home for European politicians really is all that necessary.
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Mark Le Bel in Strasbourg. The authorities in Venezuela seem no nearer to ending a revolt at a prison near the capital, Caracas, which has been going on for more than a week now. A series of gun battles between troops and prisoners has left more than 20 people dead. An attempt by the Roman Catholic Church's top representative in the country to get the prisoners to lay down their weapons and surrender has so far had little effect. The standoffs causing a political row with opposition politicians demanding a congressional inquiry into claims of corruption, gun running and drug trafficking in the country's jails. Sarah Granger's been looking at the state of Venezuela's overcrowded prisons.
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Ten sets of mechanised iron doors glide effortlessly open one by one to allow me access to the courtyard of Coro prison in western Venezuela. Surrounded on four sides by high walls or fences looked over by a watchtower and countless closed circuit cameras, the inner patio at this mixed prison feels empty and sterile. I've come here to report on a successful music scheme being rolled out in some of the country's prisons to improve inmates behavio. My visit coincides with an outbreak of serious rioting at another prison, which led to a bloody assault by the National Guard. Many deaths and injuries. But Coro is different. It's the pride of Venezuela's penitentiary system, and the Interior Ministry was keen to have me see it. The prison governor proudly shows off banks of security monitors and motion sensor cameras. Prisoners were incredulous when they learned such things had been installed at this new jail, he tells me. Elsewhere in Venezuela, the story is very different. A few days later, I'm allowed into a women's prison just outside Caracas. This is my third attempt to gain access, as over the past few days, the authorities say there's been no mains electricity and it would be unsafe for me to enter the complex. I'm told used to be a convent, and it's clear as I pass through the main gate that this was never intended to be a prison. There's just one doorway between the inmates and freedom. The buildings straggle haphazardly up a steep hill, a courtyard here, some classrooms there, administrative buildings a stone's throw from the cells. On the day I visit, there's no mains water supply, and some women scurry about with armfuls of plastic bottles, splashing water on the already muddy floor. Others lie around on the flat roofs of the lower buildings, possibly sick but more likely bored. In a riot two years ago, an optimistic music teacher tells me, the inmates burned everything mattresses, chairs, tables, although they did leave the musical instruments alone. This is much closer to the reality of most of Venezuela's 33 prisons, which are groaning under the strain of an ever increasing number of inmates. Designed to hold around 14,000 prisoners, they're currently housing more than 40,000, most of whom haven't even been convicted yet but are simply waiting to go on trial. At most facilities, security is lax and corruption of prison guards rife, so much so that smuggling in a machine gun, a few AK47s, and a handful of grenades is almost commonplace. Inside the perimeter fence, inmates have more control than prison authorities, and some continue to run extortion rackets, drug networks or street gangs in the outside world, even while they're doing time. At Uribana Prison, also in western Venezuela, human rights groups have reported that scores are settled in what prisoners call the Colosseum. Two warring inmates face each other for a knife fight, surrounded by their fellow prisoners who come to spectate cheering or booing according to their allegiances. They also place bets on who will win. Although not intended to be fatal, these fights often are. Small wonder, then, that a fight which broke out at El Rodeo prison a couple of weeks ago degenerated into a riot in which more than 20 people died. Although not the worst episode in Venezuelan prison history, it was serious enough to spark a reaction from the government, who sent in thousands of soldiers to search the prison and flush out weapons, drugs and troublemakers. They arrived in a convoy of armored vehicles, kitted out in khaki, with matching helmets and shields made of toughened plastic. The soldiers may have looked the part, but they underestimated the ragtag band of inmates inside. So well armed were some prisoners and so reluctant to relinquish their guns that a firefight ensued in which at least three more people were killed. Distressed relatives of those inside the jail gathered in the surrounding streets concerned at what they saw as a heavy handed approach by the military. Their protests became so aggressive, soldiers fired tear gas to disperse the crowds inside the prison. The army battled for the best part of a day to regain some kind of control. As I write this, the situation is still not resolved and a small group of prisoners remains inside the jail refusing to negotiate or to give up their weapons in an absurd role reversal. Local newspapers reported a few days ago that security agents were digging a tunnel so they could enter the prison undetected and remove the remaining inmates who, unlike most prisoners in the world, don't want to leave the jail.
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Sarah Granger in Caracas Official celebrations are planned tomorrow in the world's most populous country. It'll be the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Currently it has more than 80 million members. In 1921, when it held its first congress, it had just 50. That meeting was held in secret in Shanghai. Now the house where it took place has become a historical monument and Chris Hogg has been along to take a look.
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The guide, a soldier, barked into a microphone connected to a loudspeaker that hung off his belt, his voice amplified almost to the point of distortion. It filled the dark, stuffy gallery packed with visitors trooping obediently past the displays. His group listened carefully as he explained each exhibit. He was brisk, unsmiling, even if you didn't understand every word, you could tell from his bearing this was a task he took very, very seriously. The museum was built on the spot where the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party took place 90 years ago. The tour groups weren't the wide eyed folk from the countryside you see at Shanghai's other tourist spots. There was a detachment of sailors lining up in tight formation in front of a large red Chinese flag in the museum's lobby. I volunteered to join the Communist Party of China, they chanted in unison, their fists clenched and raised in a salute, to perform the party members duties to implement the party's decisions to keep the party's secrets. The oath finished with a solemn I will never betray the Party. They were followed into the galleries by a large group of monks and nuns. There were policemen, office workers. One lot were carrying their own national flag. It's been busy like this for five months in the run up to the anniversary, my guide, a young woman called Wang Yide, explained. And the people like it when they see the soldiers or the sailors here, she said, for it shows the close relationship between our military and the party. Wang Yida has been a member of the Chinese Communist Party for six years. She joined when she was at university. When I asked why she joined, she told me that at college many students thought it would help them to get a better job. The Party has survived, of course, because it has delivered. Economic success in recent years has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. But what does the Party actually do today? What's it for? I asked. To be honest, she struggled a bit to come up with an answer she was happy with. The one she plumped for was rather vague. It makes the country stronger and helps the Chinese people to have a good life. You can't blame her for finding that one difficult. In its modern incarnation, the Chinese Communist Party has shed many of its original ideals. Some are still written on the wall of the museum. They seem strangely dated in a city like Shanghai, where conspicuous consumption is the norm for many of the metropolitan elite, the dictatorship of the proletariat should be acknowledged until the end of the class struggle. That is, until the disappearance of the class differentiation in the society, reads one. Has the class system disappeared? Not really. In fact, many here would say class divisions are growing, not shrinking. They grumble that often it's members of the Party's elite who, through connections or corruption, enrich themselves on a scale that leaves others dumbfounded. The museum complex is based in a development called Shintiandi, which means New Heaven and Earth. The developer has reconstructed the old Stonegate houses on the site that were demolished a few years ago. Now they house cafes, restaurants and shops. It's a tourist trap, an elaborate facsimile of the original area, cleaned up, airbrushed if you like, and yet feted by bureaucrats across the country as a neat and tidy form of urban renewal. China's choosing to mark this important Party anniversary by treating its history in much the same way. Star studded films and television shows are recreating the heroic struggles of the current leadership's forebears. The blockbusters celebrate what the Party's achieved, rather than analyse or review what might have been done better. As always here, the state propaganda machine wants to remind people or persuade them that it's the Party they have to thank whom for China's development. But the irony, of course, is that that process has required the Party to abandon so many of its founding principles, referred to with such reverence in the museum's displays. The Party today is Communist in name, but sits atop of a capitalist system. There are hints that behind closed doors, debates do rage about what path it should take to ensure its continued survival. But if it's learnt one lesson in 90 years. It's that divisions must be kept quiet. And at its birthplace here in Shanghai, the visitors continue to come like pilgrims to a holy site. What really brings them here? Devotion or the need to look devout? It's impossible to tell. For in China, people know better than to say too much, especially to a foreigner, about a sensitive subject like the party.
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Chris Hogg In Shanghai, millions of fans of the Argentine football team River Plate are having a sad week. They're having to come to terms with the prospect of life in a lower division after suffering relegation for the first time in the club's 110 year history. River Plate, historically one of the most successful teams in the country, is more than just a football club. It's an institution in a nation where football is more than just a game. Daniel Schweimler in Buenos Aires looks at how the demise of this once mighty club is having an impact across Argentina.
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My wife, like all the women in her family, supports River Plate's arch rival from the other side of buenos Aires, Boca Jr. S. But one of her sisters has the misfortune to be married to a River Plate fan. If she makes fun of him, my wife told me, he's going to throw her out of the house. He's joking, right? I asked. I don't think so, my wife replied. We'd better set the spare bed up. I phoned my depressed brother in law the day after River Plate was relegated. Like thousands of his fellow fans shown in the crowd on television, he'd been crying unashamedly. It was the saddest day of his life, he told me. Everyone in Argentina knows some River Plate fans, but you have to know them pretty well at a time like this so as not to approach them with the wrong kind of insensitive joke. A sad finale to a great club. One friend, a lifelong river fan, told me. They have been sick for a while, but if relegation helps them to recover, then I will accept it, but with great sadness. There are times when you have to remind yourself that fans are talking about a football club and not a much loved relative with a terminal illness. River gone into the abyss. The worst case scenario were just some of the front page headlines the day after they went down only managing a 11 draw in a game they had to win against humble Belgrano from Argentina's second city, Cordoba. The newspapers brought out special supplements and there was no other topic of conversation on the radio, at work or on the street. I have not seen a River fan all morning, my local newspaper seller told me. Just smiling Boko fans. It was like this in the days before the vital matches, too. Even the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, was dragged into the fray. She said belgrano is my favourite, but then felt obliged to publicly clarify that she had been referring to manuel Belgrano, a 19th century hero in Argentina's fight for independence from colonial rule, and not the football club that bears his name. This was not just the demise of a once great club, a club that had won the Argentine championship 33 times, the continental Libertadores cup twice and countless other trophies. This was the demise of a national institution. Their fans said the psychiatrists will have trouble coping, since they are not accustomed to failure of this magnitude. Some will face the situation, said Marcelo Roffe, who has written on the psychology of football. But many others will shut themselves off, won't go to work or won't talk to their colleagues. I was at River Plate Stadium several hours before the kick off. Some fans had already arrived, decked in red and white. It was too cold and too early for them to be singing. Many of the 2000 or so policemen who were to attend the match were also there, bored and nervous, their presence in the absence of most of the supporters, creating an air of tension. All that was to change just before the final whistle blew, when angry, frustrated River Plate fans began ripping up their seats and hurling them onto the pitch. The referee was forced to abandon the game a few seconds early. The violence then spilled out onto the streets in pitched battles with the police. Shop windows were smashed and more than 70 people taken to hospital. Added to my sadness, said my brother in law, is my shame at the way those fans behaved. The River Plate players promised that the club would bounce straight back, but that could be difficult. While in the top division, they received the equivalent of £4.3 million in television money each year, which now will be reduced to less than 1. Its gate money will be reduced, and a team in the second division simply doesn't attract the same quality of players, no matter how glorious its past may have been. The post mortem into how such a mighty club has fallen so low has already begun. Everyone from past and present administrations and managers to the players, fans and of course the referees, is being blamed. River Plate, while successful, were nicknamed the Millionaires since they were brash and arrogant, much of their support drawn from the more affluent sectors of Argentine society. So the gloating at their failure is likely to be more intense, especially from Boca fans who pride themselves on their working class roots. One writer said that River's relegation was like a wound to the heart of Argentine football and that no true fan should realistically enjoy their pain. Whoever said that football was just a game?
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It is, of course, much more serious than that. Daniel Schweimler in Buenos Aires, where it's been a bad week to be a River Plate fan. That's it. There'll be more from our own correspondence around the world on Saturday morning, and I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.