Where is the plan, Syriza?

How is Syriza integrating the language and cultural skills of South Asian and Middle Eastern refugees into Greek society? The successes of USA, Australia and Canada are premised on the capacity of immigrants integrated and create a largely successful and cohesive multicultural society. Migration is the cultural and entrepreneurial engine of Australia, USA and Canada, Singapore and South Africa. As Megalogenis suggests in his book Faultiness, "forty per cent of all Australians have a link to the rest of the world". So why can't Greece's migrants be an engine for growth and a link to the global economy?

In terms of the Mediterranean, what is Syriza's economic, social and cultural partnership with Israel like? Syriza says it will not have military links with Israel yet it is Israel, Greece and Cyprus, the much touted Energy Triangle, that stand to gain most from cooperation. The Aphrodite and the Leviathan gas fields would do much to raise the economies of all three nations. Israel and Greece are comparable, Israel is a new nation with ancient roots in the region, it is democratic and built by its diaspora, just like Greece. Israel has a foremost innovation and technology startup sector linked to Asia, North and Latin America, Australia and so on. It also has extensive agricultural technologies.

In 2006, on a delegation to China, I found out that much of China's new intense agricultural development was based on Israeli technology - why not Greek? Why not seek EU support (instead of brawling with the Germans) to upgrade and develop Greece's agricultural sector? It is essential that the agricultural sector is revitalised and conforms to growing markets for organic and high quality produce, something Greece can do well. A revitalised agricultural sector would also alleviate population pressure on Greece's inefficient cities. It would be nice to see some Greeks working on the land again, tailoring their skills and commercial knowhow to fulfilling new markets.

What of Greece's relationship to Turkey, the new small China of Europe? Turkey was so busy developing its human, economic and cultural assets after it was rejected by the Germans from entering the EU that it is now a mushrooming economy and bridge between East and West. Turkey is doing successfully what Greece once did. And our neighbours, the Balkan States, what plans does Syriza have? The Balkans, like Israel, Lebanon, Asia and Turkey, are Greece's natural economic, cultural and political allies. Only under former PASOK Prime Minister Simitis and more recently ND Prime Minister Samaras did we see any of these issues considered.

The biggest question for me is the eternal one; does Syriza (unlike all other failed Greek governments) have any plan to harness the business, managerial, political, language and cultural skills of millions of Hellenic diaspora in the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Brazil and more? Are there Anglo-American Hellenes negotiating for Greece in the Anglosphere? Are there German Hellenes talking to the Germans? Where are the Brazilian Greeks? Why aren't they being used to build links with Brazil?

I see a change of atmospherics but after the victory party all I see is a reversion into abstractions and ethnocentricity. Many, not all, Greeks on Facebook from Greece attack Germany, they talk about breaking the chains of the troika's oppression. The mere suggestion that Greeks may want to reflect and take some responsibility for the chaos, corruption, urban decay and economic collapse of Greece just results in adolescent insults about Aussies, Germans, and Americans and so on. Of course we diaspora Greeks are seen as traitors, or un-Greek.

Once a little calmer they express a view that Greeks and Greece are particularistic, unique, no-one can understand them. Or, that they are victims of rapacious foreign banks and Germans of course. When I sarcastically say to my diaspora peers that "Greeks [in Greece] know everything" they laugh and agree

Xenophobia has shifted (for the time being) from targeting immigrants to targeting the Germans for all the ills of the Greek economy and society. I hope I am wrong, but I see no plan. I see no long-term economic and civic plan to shift Greeks in Greece from the binary, hero and victim mentality. I crave to see Hellenes be what they once were, innovative, socially minded, entrepreneurial, accepting and tolerant global citizens.