Cuts leading to fatalism in countries used to helplessness

DURING the week a headline in an international business newspaper declared that the Irish were taking the austerity in the same way as they suffer a hangover – lying on a sofa moaning.

It is probably true even if the American writer was drawing on the stereotypical Irish image more than necessary.

Certainly the emotion in the demonstrations of Athens against the massive measures imposed on the Greeks is missing from any of the manifestations on the streets of Dublin.

And there is no sign that the Government will fall as the Spanish government is threatened with as a result of their being forced to return for a second bite from their citizens’ purses.

In some ways the Irish are responding much the same as the Latvians – with a certain fatalism as though this is their due and they would be foolish to expect anything else.

A Latvian colleague commenting on the near despair of her countrymen and the almost complete collapse of their economy said they did not appear to know how to protest.

“They only know how to sing,” she said, referring to their wonderful choirs perhaps.

So what is it makes the Latvian and the Irish response similar? Ireland’s Catholic heritage with its insistence that all things pass, that you are not worthy and the invasive influence of guilt could explain the relative passiveness.

But the Latvians do not have the same Catholic background. What they do share with the Irish is that they were dominated by a bigger power for a long time and against whom there was little point in objecting.

The Latvians could be forgiven for not having completed the transition from this given that they have only had 20 years of independence.

Perhaps the Irish have not made the transition either. After all 1916 was not a popular rising and would not have succeeded if the leaders had not been brutally shot. The negotiated independence was not even popular and the ensuing civil war resolved little as the winners adopted the mantle of the losers.

The sense of helplessness perhaps comes from seeing one elite take the place of another, putting their own interests first and displaying little sense of nationhood.

Landlords or bankers – it seems to amount to much the same despite the century in between.

This helplessness, now disguised as cynicism, has led the Irish to expect little good from their leaders. And even now when the norms of economics and the boundaries of sovereignty are being questioned and each person has been saddled with the debts of others, there appears to be little demand to reappraise values and systems.

Meanwhile, in Greece they are desperately trying to adopt some of the more commonsense aspects of running a country and during the week passed anti-corruption legislation. They have also been trying to get everyone to pay tax – something you did not necessarily have to do if you had a friendly tax inspector who would give you a discount for a back-hander.

The week’s breakthrough came when they published a list of doctors who have been fined millions of euro for tax evasion. For years they claimed to earn little more than the average wage despite living in big houses with lavish lifestyles.

Orthopedic surgeons are also under investigation following a court case in Britain that found manufacturers of prosthetics were bribing doctors in Greece to buy their products. One result was that an artificial knee cost the average Greek citizen between twice and four times what it cost in other countries.