Negotiator Castling

Castling is a special type of chess move. It is the only move that allows you to move two pieces at the same time on the chess board and re-arrange the entire positioning of pieces, hoping that this way you will render your opponent's strategy null and void. It is a very effective and strong move, if put to work appropriately. Appropriately in essence means, once you identify the perfect timing for it. Usually you make that move once you realise the immediate and imminent threat of a check-mate.

By analogy, if you draw the parallel to Greece's negotiations with its European partners what happened two days ago -in chess terms speaking- was a castling move. Yanis Varoufakis was recalled by the PM (the King) and was substituted by Euclid Tsakalotos, an Oxford economist and SYRIZA member for many years to lead the negotiations with the European partners from this point on. This move came after the confirmed conclusion of the negotiating parties that the current composition of Greece's negotiating team was posing a high risk of failure (check-mate). For the record, the press leaked that Yani's removal came after the explicit request of Mr. Dijesselbloem to have him removed, something that the Spokesman of the PM adamantly denies to have been the case. Irrespective of how Varoufaki's removal came about, fact is that the overall impression was that his involvement did not promote the discussions to a level satisfactory to both sides. At the same time, however, the PM in a recent TV interview that was broadly received internationally, rushed to defend Yanis Varoufakis and called him an "asset" of the Greek Government and spoke very highly of his professional qualifications, which he advertised to be by far better than the qualifications of his European counterparts in the negotiations.

Compliments aside, the real question behind this revocation however, is a different one. The true question is how close have we really come or still are to a check-mate? And as everyone probably knows in politics, just like in chess only one party is completely defeated in the end, irrespective of the casualties suffered in-between. And I believe that we are all smart enough, domestically, as well as internationally to understand who the defeated party will be, if negotiations with Europe fail. I should correct myself to the extent that Yanis Varoufakis only last weekend gave an interview in a Greek Financial Newspaper saying that Europe has a problem to understand the ineffectiveness of its austerity policy. This begs the question whether Yanis Varoufakis lives in a parallel universe or whether he is still in denial to understand what is at stake. Putting the blame on Europe at this point in time -whether true or not is a whole different subject-is extremely dangerous from a negotiations perspective. Of course, there are also other voices within the country, such as Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a former MP of the European Parliament with the German liberals of FDP, that believe that we are already past the check-mate point, claiming that the Europeans have already given up on Greece and all the madness that comes with it, and are now looking into their own damage control. The truth is that this Government has been conducting the negotiations with Europe in full secrecy and no one really knows aside from the very members participating in the negotiations where we really stand. Even the news on the same events are conflicting between the Greek and the International press, whereby clearly more credibility is given to the international press than to the domestic one. But in an alleged Democracy how can it be possible that even the Greek Parliament and its members are clueless about the course of such vital negotiations that will decide the future of this country? Maybe we are at the dawn of a new type of "selective" Democracy, just like we are already in a state of "selective" bankruptcy, since we prioritise payments depending on the risk-profile of the lender.