In Dateline’s next story, there may be some lessons for South Sudan, especially in relation to managing the economy. I'm, referring of course to Greece which is so badly in debt it needs massive financial handouts to survive. But as Aaron Lewis reports, ordinary Greeks are wondering why they are paying the price for the gross incompetence of their leaders.

REPORTER:  Aaron Lewis

The city of Athens is on the verge of falling apart.

DIMITRA MARITSA (Translation): You hear it every day on the TV, on the radio, on programs about finance always about the economic crisis.

Greece has fallen into an abyss of public debt unlike anything ever experienced by a European country. The economy has been crippled, destroying the livelihoods of ordinary Greeks. 

DIMITRA MARITSA (Translation): It makes you feel that you cannot cope in this country anymore because it is so difficult.

And so, they come here, in their tens and thousands to protest in the public square at the doorstep of Parliament. 

WOMAN (Translation): The protesters are a very diverse crowd, students, unemployed, housewives, right winged, left winged, nationalist – completely diverse. But with something in common, they all feel something must change.

Here, in the birthplace of democracy, Syntagma Square has once again become an extraordinary forum for public dialogue. Every night, as the sun sets, Greeks gather to debate their future. 

PROTESTER (Translation):  We must shock them with 500,000 people on the streets, we must set political targets, we must not retreat, as was suggested before they gave in.

The topic for the night's discussion is voted on by a show of hands and a lottery is drawn to choose the speakers. The rest stay and listen attentively for hours. This has been happening every night for over a month. 

MAN (Translation):  We don’t want to see any of the MPs who voted for the austerity measures that turn Greeceinto a colony of its creditors that demand that the people pay for the crisis.

Tonight, the tension runs high because tomorrow Parliament votes on a new round of austerity measures that will mean brutal cuts across public spending, demanded by Europe in return for further loans. A 48-hour city wide strike is planned - the biggest in more than two decades and hundreds of thousands will protest. 

MAN (Translation):  What will happen tomorrow is nothing more than a glorious gathering of all the Greeks that are resisting the commands of the IMF and the EU.  

The march begins quietly at first but swells quickly. It has been organised by Greece's two largest unions – the Public Service Union and the Trade Union headed by Mr Yanis Panagopolous.

YANIS PANAGOPOLOUS, TRADE UNION HEAD (Translation):  Of course the last five years of government was a total fiscal derailment. Big deficits – huge deficits – a more than doubling of the national debt and a public sector staffed to a super-maximum level.

Interestingly, Mr Panagopolous is not marching. He has been attacked in the past because the unions are seen as being as much a part of the problem as part of the solution. But Mr Panagopolous insists they are all victims. 

YANIS PANAGOPOLOUS (Translation):  We have reached an outrageous level of unemployment.  We estimate it is 20% of the workforce. Therefore you realise that the economic crisis has been transformed into a social and employment crisis.

With the various columns of people marching around, Athens finally descend on the square, there is at first a carnival atmosphere. While protesters taunt their politicians in effigy, inside, those same politicians are in their own battle, with Prime Minister Papandreou insisting the Government has no choice but to pass the austerity package, without it Greece would be bankrupt within a couple of weeks. 

PRIME MINISTER PAPANDREOU (Translation):  At all costs, we have to avoid the country’s collapse. To maintain our ability to talk about the country’s present and future.

The Prime Minister faces down opposition both outside Parliament and inside, across the floor. Opposition MPs insist that the government is going too far.

OPPOSITION MP (Translation):  This interim program that the PM, proudly, asked us to vote for, one not only cannot vote for but would be ashamed even to read.

And then, outside, everything changes.  A group of masked provocateurs begins throwing rocks at the police and the police retaliate. Not just against the attackers but against everyone in the square. 

This is now the only way to operate here in central Athens, right outside the parliament building. It’s been hours of this protest, most of it peaceful, a few hundred people have engaged in constant clashes between themselves and the police, resulting in tear-gas filling the entire square for the last few hours. The majority of people numbers in the thousands are actually here for peaceful protest.

Young and old people refuse to leave, enduring the tear-gas, fires, stones and truncheons - They all have their own reasons for staying.

WOMAN (Translation):  I am protesting because they have stolen my life, my dreams, my children’s dreams and lives.

PRIME MINISTER PAPANDREOU (Translation):  There are many protesters outside, some because they are really suffering, and would be wronged. Some because they will lose privileges they have grown used to.

MAN (Translation):  It looks like there’s no future for at least the next 20 years – they are destroying us.

PRIME MINISTER PAPANDREOU (Translation):  The crucial thing is, that not one of them, not one of us, not one Greek family, should suffer the consequences of a collapse.

Amidst the riot the Parliament votes.

MINISTER (Translation):  I have the honour of announcing the result of the vote. In total, 298MPs have voted. 155 MPs voted Yes.

The bill passes.

WOMAN (Translation):  I was really sad when I heard it was voted in, I was almost in tears – shame on us.

Greece is battling its own hydra, a monster of high public debt, chronic tax evasion, a bloated civil service, a graft ridden government, all this combined with the systemic problems of Europe's common currency. For the past year, the Greek government has survived on massive bail-out loans from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

YANIS VAROUFAKIS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC THEORY:  In May 2010, we were told that the only solution would be for Greece to borrow a hundred and ten billion euros, that is a monumental sum in exchange for austerity measures and why were we supposed to take this on? To prevent a default - a cessation of payment to creditors. Because a default would mean contagious, that it could spread to the rest of Europe.

Yanis Varoufakis is one of Greece's most respected economists and a vocal opponent of the bailout. He says that while the first austerity measures brought massive public job cuts and pension reform, the problem was worsened.

PROFESSOR YANIS VAROUFAKIS: The crisis got worse in Greece, the debt of GDP ratio exploded. GTP shrank from which we have to repay those loans and the crisis spread first to Ireland and then to Portugal. We have a policy, a medicine, that poisoned the patient and not only poisoned the patient but also spread the disease to other patients. Now we have the same doctors saying, OK, we need a larger dose of the same medicine. If the European Union and the IMF was a doctor, they would be struck off the register.

The new austerity package cuts even deeper and now there will be a fire sale of the nation's most valuable public assets, including Piraeus, the largest passenger port in Europe. 

DIMITRA MARITSA (Translation): There have been cuts to pensions and salaries, taxation will be higher. The children in turn, won’t find a job easily because the economic situation does not offer well-paid jobs anymore.

25-year-old Dimitra Maritsa sees no future for herself in Greece so she is trying to emigrate toAustralia.

DIMITRA MARITSA (Translation): I think more than 50% of people of my age have considered migrating to another country. Today they are middle class, young people of my age, 23 to 25 years old… they have tertiary education, some with post graduate studies or doctorates… and maybe that could be bad for Greece because it might suffer a brain drain.

Many of those that can leave Greece will, many more will continue to gather in a square to search for other answers and show their decent in their own way.

MAN:  They saw that there is a lot of angry people and that all the measures that have passed so far, all the Bills have passed, I think, a lot of people know that this cannot go on.

WOMAN (Translation):  Kids, I’m a grandma who has lived through war, misery and hunger and I believed that my grandchildren and children would live in better days than me. Suddenly, I realised I was living in an illusion, I would have liked to be with you but I can’t, I’m injured. I admire you and love you, don’t retreat, we are all in it together. With love, your grandma.

A handful of the older generation admits they may have played a part in this tragedy. 

MAN (Translation):  No one gives you anything for free, we are in a mess because we did not work and the politicians pampered us so we would keep them in power.

Greece will now go on slashing its public expenditure and dive deeper into the red. The debt is now more than 300 billion euros and many fear it can never be repaid.

PROFESSOR YANIS VAROUFAKIS:  It is like being in a bubble, or a nightmare, it is hard to know you're in it and to extricate yourself from it and look at it from the outside rationally and analytically. People are angry. I do wish this was a tragedy because tragedy includes catharsis at the end but it may just be a catastrophe.

YALDA HAKIM:  Aaron Lewis there, in the thick of it with his tear gas mask. For a plain English guide to Greece's complicated financial crisis, check out our website sbs.com.au/dateline

Reporter/Camera/Editor

AARON LEWIS

Producer

DONALD CAMERON 

Fixer
DIMITRIS KATSAROS

Translations/Subtitling
GEORGE POULARAS

Original Music composed by VICKI HANSEN