Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Ladies and gentlemen,
Speakers of the world’s Parliaments,

At this occasion of the 70^th anniversary of the UN,
Also marking 70 years from the end of World War II,

At this 4^th World Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, on placing democracy at the service of peace, sustainable development and building the world that people want, I stand before you and among you, as President of the recently dissolved Hellenic Parliament to address you with a call for solidarity to the Greek people and to Greece: The place where democracy was born and where it is now being bluntly attacked and violated.

Greece and its people have been victimized during the last five years by policies purported to provide a sustainable solution to the country’s over-indebtment and a way out of the economic crisis.

These policies, contained in agreements called “Memoranda of Understanding” and concluded by the Greek governments and a trio of international institutions (namely the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org , the EC and the ECB ECB
European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html ) known as the TROIKA Troika Troika: IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank, which together impose austerity measures through the conditions tied to loans to countries in difficulty.

IMF : https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/index.en.html and acting as Greece’s creditors, have resulted to severe violations of human rights, especially social rights, fundamental freedoms and the very rule of law.

What has been presented as “bail-out” loan agreements has resulted to misery, unemployment at unprecedented rates (72% among young women and 60% among young men), hundreds of thousands of young people emigrating, an explosion of suicides, the marginalization of the young, the old, the weak, the poor, the immigrants the refugees, half of the country’s children living under the poverty line, a situation amounting to a humanitarian crisis and documented in the UN Independent Experts’ on Debt and Human Rights reports and public statements, as well as in a series of international court decisions and findings.

On the 25^th of January 2015, only seven months ago, the Greek people through general elections gave a clear and unequivocal mandate to government and to parliament to do away with these homicidal policies. Negotiations started.

A special Committee of the Parliament was formed, called the Truth Committee on Public Debt, to conduct an audit and a legal assessment of the debt it issued a preliminary report last June.

The report found that the state’s sovereign debt Sovereign debt Government debts or debts guaranteed by the government. is illegal, illegitimate, odious and unsustainable. It found that the sovereign debt has been concluded through procedures which grossly violate constitutional law, parliamentary procedure and fundamental human rights and freedoms guaranteed under international law, thereby justifying the denunciation of the debt. It found that creditors had been acting in bad faith, knowingly burdening the country with unsustainable loans to save French, German and Greek private banks.

Despite these findings, Greece’s creditors insisted that the people’s mandate be neglected.

On June 25^th, a 48 hour ultimatum was addressed to the Greek government asking it to accept, contrary to popular mandate, a series of measures dismantling labour law, abolishing social security guarantees Guarantees Acts that provide a creditor with security in complement to the debtor’s commitment. A distinction is made between real guarantees (lien, pledge, mortgage, prior charge) and personal guarantees (surety, aval, letter of intent, independent guarantee). and legal protection for over-indebted citizens, while at the same time requiring the sell-out of the most precious public assets and public enterprises, but also major ports, airports and public infrastructure.

All to be sold or given away to repay an unsustainable and odious debt Odious Debt According to the doctrine, for a debt to be odious it must meet two conditions:
1) It must have been contracted against the interests of the Nation, or against the interests of the People, or against the interests of the State.
2) Creditors cannot prove they they were unaware of how the borrowed money would be used.

We must underline that according to the doctrine of odious debt, the nature of the borrowing regime or government does not signify, since what matters is what the debt is used for. If a democratic government gets into debt against the interests of its population, the contracted debt can be called odious if it also meets the second condition. Consequently, contrary to a misleading version of the doctrine, odious debt is not only about dictatorial regimes.

(See Éric Toussaint, The Doctrine of Odious Debt : from Alexander Sack to the CADTM).

The father of the odious debt doctrine, Alexander Nahum Sack, clearly says that odious debts can be contracted by any regular government. Sack considers that a debt that is regularly incurred by a regular government can be branded as odious if the two above-mentioned conditions are met.
He adds, “once these two points are established, the burden of proof that the funds were used for the general or special needs of the State and were not of an odious character, would be upon the creditors.”

Sack defines a regular government as follows: “By a regular government is to be understood the supreme power that effectively exists within the limits of a given territory. Whether that government be monarchical (absolute or limited) or republican; whether it functions by “the grace of God” or “the will of the people”; whether it express “the will of the people” or not, of all the people or only of some; whether it be legally established or not, etc., none of that is relevant to the problem we are concerned with.”

So clearly for Sack, all regular governments, whether despotic or democratic, in one guise or another, can incur odious debts. .

The Hellenic Parliament, accepted the Government’s proposal to hold a referendum on the ultimatum, and the Greek people, through a large majority of 62%, rejected the measures.

During the referendum week, international and foreign government officials tried to influence the referendum outcome through statements terrorizing the people.

The referendum was held with the banks closed and capital controls imposed as a result for the ECB’s refusal to provide liquidity Liquidity The facility with which a financial instrument can be bought or sold without a significant change in price. after the proclamation of the referendum.

And yet, democracy prevailed. The people pronounced themselves clearly and said a 62% NO to those homicidal measures.

What followed is a nightmare for every democratic conscience and a disgrace.

The creditors refused to consider the referendum outcome. They insisted, under the threat of provoking a bank-failure and a humanitarian disaster, that measures harsher than those rejected be adopted.

The government was forced to accept that Parliament legislates on pre-formulated texts of hundreds of pages with no deliberation and at pre-fixed dates with an emergency procedure and with the banks still closed. This extortion was baptized “prerequisites” for an agreement and Parliament was called to abolish laws it had only voted during the previous 4 months and to refrain from any legislative initiative without prior approval by the creditors.

An over 100 page law construed in 1 article was passed on July 15^th in less than 24 hours. A 1000 page law construed in 3 articles was passed on July 22^nd in less than 24 hours. An almost 400 page law was passed on August 14, in 24 hours.

Parliament legislated 3 times under duress and coercion.

And after this was done, attesting that a large part of the deputies of the major governing party, including the Parliament’s President, refused to vote such legislation, Parliament was inadvertedly dissolved to ensure a “more stable majority” to implement what the people have rejected.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Sovereign debt is being used against the Greek population and the Hellenic Parliament to reduce Democracy. But Democracy is an ultimate value.

And Parliaments cannot be reduced to simple stamps approving dictated norms, rejected by the people and construed to destroy societies and the next generations.

I call upon you as Parliamentarians of the world to support the claim for democracy and parliamentary sovereignty against debt-coercion.

And to support the initiatives of the UN General Assembly and the Ad Hoc Committee on Sovereign debt as well as the initiatives of the UN Independent Experts on debt and human rights.

Do not allow for democracy to be annihilated at the place where it was born.
Do not allow that any other Parliament be coerced to vote against the people’s will and against its’ deputies mandate.
Do not allow that human rights, human lives, human dignity and the most valuable UN principles be crushed to serve the banking system.

The world that people want cannot be built without the world’s people.