Wednesday 22 May 2013

"The End of the Beginning"


Building on any positive image, Greece has seemingly regained in the international media, won’t be easy or straight forward. The change in the media mood toward Greece has to be accredited to the determination of our society as a whole – despite our differences - to implement necessary reforms and deliver and more importantly to the country’s achievements. For the first time since all this started, the basis of the discussion has shifted from the failures or omissions to the results. We are still in the middle of the storm. I don’t know if this is the beginning of the end but it is definitely the end of the beginning (as W. Churchill so elegantly put it in his November 10, 1942 speech.)

After a series of defeats from Dunkirk to Singapore, Churchill could finally tell that "we have a new experience. We have victory - a remarkable and definite victory."
I believe the Greek PM Samaras is entitled to claim a victory. However this is only a battle in a long series of battles that need to be won. We only need to put national interests ahead of political ones!

As Dr George N. Tzogopoulos, research fellow at ELIAMEP, concludes in his article on the international image of Greece on LSE Blog-Euro Crisis in the Press (Mediating a Greek Success Story?): 
“… a window of opportunity is now open. Valuable time has been offered for Greece to benefit from the current international climate in order to meet its fiscal targets and return to growth. It is in the hands of the coalition government to positively surprise international media leading them to rebrand the lemma ‘Greece’ and disassociate it from terms such as ‘fakelaki’ and ‘rousfeti’.”

Ref: The Lord Mayor's Luncheon, Mansion House, "The End of the Beginning", November 10, 1942
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/EndoBegn.html