Guy Verhofstadt for Greek Election 2015

Guy Verhofstadt for Greek Election 2015

[fransdubois]

Dear Guy,
Today in the European Parliament the world needed to know:
You're angry - angry about so many Greek missed opportunities ... angered many Greek promises without concrete commitments. You fulminated on your passionate way against Prime Tsipras, sneered at him and then showed him the path to follow. The oracle of Delphi seems to sink into nothingness against the new oracle of Ghent, Guy Verhofstadt. With many Greek pathos, standing and wildly gesticulating you read Tsipras the Levites. Between two statements by, you kindly took the applause ...
It was fun, the cameras enjoyed it and in no time you had employees ensured that the world via youtube, twitter and all other possible channels could meet the European statesman Guy Verhofstadt, President of the fourth group in the European parliament with 70 seats to 748.
I enjoyed it too, although I was not overwhelmed by your speech as we in Belgium  know you already a little longer by your previous rich career in the Belgian politics.
In your opening statement you taught us that there are no solutions are possible without democratic backing. O irony: Europe, which is the emanation of the anti-democracy, is going to teach Greece, the country's which invented democracy, what democracy really is.
Europe, who ignored every single democratic outcome of a referendum, whether it was the Danes, Greeks or the French or the Dutch who pronounced themselves against the European Constitution :  the result was canceled by the EU as invalid . Have you forgotten all this, Guy? In Belgium, we were never even allowed to pronounce ourselves about fundamental changes like a European constitution, a union with other countries, the unfair competition in favor of the multinationals, open borders, and the social impact and exploitation, the ecological regression..No, no vote of the people, no referenda…everything decided by the political parties. The Belgian population had no voice in this whatsoever :the European doctrine dictate had to prevail. No adventures .And this despite of all your fake and broken promises to introduce referenda in Belgium. You never implemented it. All fake promises. And now you dare to give lessons to the Greeks about democracy? Shame on you

 Afterwards you continued:
“The problem is that the Greek political class made no effort to reform. You talk about reform, but we see nothing concrete. We run a Grexit and the ordinary Greek citizens will be paying the bill .The clientelism needs to be addressed, the political manipulations for appointing civil servants  (where Tsipras'party recently appointed 12 new directors), the issue of the debt that must be addressed, the privatized banks and last but not least  the privileges of the Greek political class that needs to be abolished ".
Thereupon you even proposed to travel to Athens today to help Tsipras to realize this.
Dear Guy, I'm used to a certain level of hypocrisy, but it defies my imagination to hear all this out of your mouth . Years ago, when you were the Belgian prime minister, you were lucky to benefit from economic revival, providing you a lot of extra tax income.  You however did not structurally reduce our huge national debt : no, you did the opposite : you have distributed the money to the benefit of each party’s desiderata. No brave choices were made, the European convergence criteria which Belgium had already to achieve in  1/1/1999 were not met under your premiership and they are still not being met now. Our national debt is still sky high and does not reach the required  60%.at all. On the contrary, it is still increasing year after year.  How dare you giving lessons to the Greeks ? As professor  Paul De Grauwe, ex party member of your party, recently expressed it :  The burden of Greek debt is in fact lower than that of Belgium and most other countries in the eurozone. "
Where were your concrete structural reforms with a roadmap when you were prime minister, Guy? The upcoming tsunami of aging costs in Belgium was never addressed by you or your government. This is the reason why the current generation of Belgian politicians and more specifically the Belgian population are facing even a more important debt, see their income decreased, pay more and more taxes without having even a guarantee to receive a decent pension at all.  How dare you lecturing the Greeks in front of the European cameras?
At a certain moment, you even confiscated the pension fund of the public phone company Belgacom, you booked the funds as income and you refused to book the liabilities in your budget and consequently falsifying your numbers. You forget about all that, my dear Guy ?  Was this your example of a structural reform ? Of securing the financial future of Belgium ? Was this your famous roadmap, guy ?Again, how dare you to speak up and give lessons to the Greeks ?
Or what about your legendary sale of government buildings to cover the deficit and then being forced to lease them back but 4x more expensive, forcing the current tax payer to pay an ever increasing rent ..Was this another great example of your legendary structural approach of the Belgian debt ?How dare you lecturing the Greeks, Guy ?
And last but not least  your lecturing about "political assignments of public servants and corruption? My dear Guy, there is no post, no public vacancy of any relevance  in Belgium that is NOT politically appointed: Every function has been politically appointed:  the judges, all top officials, all key positions in public companies. If one were to rank all European countries for the number of political appointments, Belgium would probably spot at number one. Do not you know more that Guy? And you contributed to that and your party still is, as we speak ? Again, how dare you lecturing the Greeks, Guy ?
And then you wonder liberal recipe for the privatization of public banks: there is no single privatized bank in Belgium that did not go bankrupt and that afterwards has been saved with tax money, Guy: Fortis, KBC, ING - all of them were bankrupt and had to rely on support from the taxpayer. Also, all major private banks in Europe went bankrupt and were saved with tax money : you forgot about all that, Guy ?
And you sneer about the abolition of privileges for politicians? Are you joking, Guy ? There is no other institution with  more privileges than the European institutions, their staff and their members of parliament, all paid for with hard-earned tax money: the average European officials are “earning” a multiple of what the average European salary is. The salaries and expense declarations of the European parliamentarians are legendary, the retirement of European staff  at the age of 55 while at the same time imposing the normal European workers to remain active until the age  of 67  , the enormous waste of taxpayers' money by e.g. the monthly move from Brussels to Strasbourg, to name something just to name something ... Or the  abuse of the members of parliament, coming to sign the presence register just to be able to make an expense declaration without having participated to the meeting . Or the many trips abroad with stays in luxury hotels..you forget all that, my dear Guy ? And every journalist who filmed these abuses has been kicked out and the accesses to the European buildings further restricted  ..And I don’t want to mention to whom the 13000 lobbyist, payed by the multinationals  are “talking” every day ? Perhaps better that this not unveiled by another undercover journalist, my dear Guy. .
So please, be modest and do not  lecture the Greeks, Guy..Certainly not you.
Your role of European statesman or your role as “conscience of Europe” is something you can maybe bring with conviction to ignorant Euro-parliamentarians, but here in Belgium we know better Guy ... Much better..We know you and your political past. When we see you, lecturing the Greeks, it rather becomes  an embarrassing spectacle to us which we feel shame at your place. Your act is not credible at all, Guy…and the role of European statesman is really full of hypocrisy. We urge you to do some self-assessment, , to look in the mirror guy and then just shot up. You do not have any credibility to lecture other people. You cannot demand from them what you, as a prime minister was never able to deliver.
Indeed, some people like you, my dear Guy, owe their good conscience to their bad memory ...
Sincerely, Guy