Anti-austerity movement

Twelve people were arrested overnight in Paris during clashes between the police and anti-government demonstrators following the nightly "Nuit Debout" sit-in, police said.

"How are things in Greece now?" a Turkish friend asked me the other day, looking a bit perplexed over the information that a period of political instability may be around the corner once again. 

“SYRIZA, Podemos – venceremos” chanted Podemos’s Pablo Iglesias into the microphone back in January 25, on the golden days of the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA). Greece had voted to “tear the bailout” and the anti-austerity sentiment was high. It was believed that an anti-austerity movement would rip-roar through Europe beginning in Greece with SYRIZA.

Back then, Iglesias had said:

The anti-austerity movement of Indignant Citizens which started demonstrating in major cities across Greece on 5 May 2010 demanding to abolish the austerity measures and memorandum was the subject of a survey conducted by University of Macedonia and the Panteion University in cooperation with Greek researchers at universities abroad.

Fifteen anarchist members of the group, “Rubicon”, entered the headquarters of the Independent Greeks (ANEL) party that is a junior coalition partner with the government. They hung two banners with anti-austerity slogans from the rooftop, police said on Monday.

“Important events for which you are not prepared are going on in Athens, with results which probably won’t match articles you wrote,” EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker told a reporters covering the Eurogroup meeting in Brussels, while European Parliament president Martin Schulz added that “what is happening today is historic”.

Several hundred anti-austerity protesters, chanting slogans against the European Union and IMF, rallied near Parliament in Athens on Sunday as a deepening crisis forced Greece's leftist government to announce capital controls on the banking system.

“Anti-austerity”, distinctly anti-capitalist and mostly government-friendly the one day, “pro-Europe” with significant whiffs of anti-government and … anti-communist fervor the next day — so goes the “dueling” rallies in front of Greece’s Parliament.

Another anti-austerity protest and a demonstration in support of Greece remaining in the euro are due to take place on Sunday and Monday respectively.

The anti-austerity protest, which is supported by SYRIZA, has been planned for 7.30 p.m. on Sunday in Syntagma Square.

Its main slogan is ?Democracy cannot be blackmailed.?

A day after a pro-government rally in central Athens across from Parliament, unofficially dubbed an “anti-austerity” protest, a second rally comes on Thursday evening  under the theme “We’re staying in Europe”.