Could revolution follow Greek crisis?

PRIME Minister Alexis Tsipras reshuffled his government on Saturday to remove several Members of Parliament who - in the Greek Parliament last week - voted against the stringent bailout deal and agreed, in principle, with Greece's creditors. The huge financial package, the third such bailout for Athens, has now been ratified by all key eurozone administrations, including Germany.

Despite last week's deal, Greece remains in economic intensive care and there are grave concerns about whether sustainable economic growth can be resumed in the absence of a significant debt write-off (Greece's debt is over 175 per cent of gross domestic product). However, critical as the financial situation is, EU Council of Ministers President Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister, warned last Friday that he is "really afraid of the ideological or political contagion, not financial contagion, of the Greek crisis" across Europe.

He highlighted that the unfolding tragedy has catalysed radical political groups on both the right and left of the political spectrum. "It was always the same game before the biggest tragedies in our European history, this tactical alliance between radicals from all sides," he said. He went on to assert that "the atmosphere is a little similar to the time after 1968 in Europe" . . . "I can feel, maybe not a revolutionary mood, but something like widespread impatience . . . When impatience becomes not an individual but a social experience of feeling, this is the introduction for revolutions."