The transcript of Dialogos Radio’s interview with Thanasis Gounaris of the Pirate Party of Greece, who spoke to us about the party and its positions, the ongoing political developments in Greece, and in his role as an educator, the crisis facing Greek schools and students. This interview aired on our broadcasts for the week of March 19-25, 2015. Find the podcast of this interview here.

ΜΝ: Joining us today on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series is Thanasis Gounaris, the president of the board of the Pirate Party of Greece, and Thanasi, thank you for taking the time first of all to speak with us today.

TG: Thank you for inviting me.

MN: To begin, share with us an introduction for our listeners about the Pirate Party in Greece and in Europe, a brief historical overview and a description of your party’s basic positions.

TG: For starters, what I would like to share with your listeners is that the Pirate Party in Greece has been in existence for almost three years, since 2012. It is a sister party to the other Pirate Parties all across Europe and the world, it is recognized by the Greek Supreme Court, and it has participated in three electoral contests, the two parliamentary elections of 2012 and the European elections of 2014. It is an official and founding member of the PPEU, the Pirate Party of Europe, and it is a member of the PPI, the Pirate Party International. We have a common political platform with all of the other Pirate Parties, and each party adds its own issues which concern each individual country. The basic characteristic of the party is that it began in Sweden at the time that Pirate Bay was being investigated, and most of its members are very active Internet users. Its basic principles are transparency, democracy, and a free internet, opposition to any imposition of control over the internet and over the free exchange of ideas through this medium, and what I can say is that our party, in its three years of existence in Greece, has accomplished a lot. For instance, in last year’s European parliamentary elections we finished with almost 1% of the vote, which is a significant number for us. We have developed, across many segments of society, an activist presence as well, not with the traditional definition of activism however, but with a view towards allowing citizens and workers to be able to have a voice and to decide upon issues which concern them. We have been especially successful in doing this in the field of education, where we have created the Pirates in Education, which is an activist group in the broadest possible sense of the term, and whose goal is to become an organ through which educators can participate in the decision-making process, above and beyond existing unions or organizations, which often are closely related to political parties. Now, one could say that the Pirates in Education are themselves part of the Pirate Party, but we do not operate in the same way. What we believe is that we as citizens should be informed about everything and should have the ability to make decisions on our own, instead of having others make decisions for us. In other words, one could say that we are against representation, either through labor unions or through the parliament. We believe in the free exchange of ideas and opinions of the citizens and believe that these ideas and opinions need to be supported by our elected officials. We are against the representative form of democracy in that sense and instead favor direct democracy.

MN: Continuing along this line of thought, what are the positions of the Pirate Party of Greece as far as the key economic issues which the country is currently facing?

TG: The truth is that we have not developed, nor do we want to develop, an economic ideology which says that everything will be owned by the state and that the state will be the primary employer, for instance, which is a leftist point of view, or conversely, the libertarian point of view that everything must be privatized in order for there to be competition. We have not developed and we do not wish to develop such an ideology. What we are saying, especially at the present time for our country, is that the citizens need to be fully informed about the state of the country’s finances instead of passively living through the crisis, and based on this, citizens should have the ability to make decisions. This is something that should have happened a while ago, beginning with whether Greece should have joined the euro, the common currency, an option which was never given to the citizens. The citizens should then have been asked, at the start of the economic crisis, which policy route to take, prior to the memorandums and the loan agreements being signed. They should have then been consulted about the continuation of these agreements, and they should be asked now, in the condition that Greece is now in, what must happen next. What is happening right now in Greece is we have a country where no money is circulating, the market has dried up, and even though I am not necessarily in favor of the market, what I am trying to say is that the market is not active and no money is circulating. I am experiencing this at work, in my personal life, and through friends and family. We do not know what will happen and there exists a great uncertainty. In my opinion and in the opinion of the Pirate Party, what needs to happen is that we as citizens must be informed, with every last detail, about the condition of our country, which alternative options exist, and to make a decision, perhaps through a referendum. This would be a decision that, regardless of what it is, we would be obligated to enforce in order for our country to eventually be able to get out of its current crisis and to begin to live again, because for the past few years we are not living, we simply exist and are attempting to survive, nothing more. To summarize, we do not have a distinct economic ideology, but we are a political party that is in favor of Europe, we are part of a European coalition of Pirate Parties, we do not want our country for any reason to depart from the European Union, but we can no longer sustain this current situation with the euro. As a result, a solution needs to be found, but this solution needs to come directly from the citizens, from a process of participatory democracy.

MN: We are speaking with Thanasis Gounaris of the Pirate Party of Greece here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series, and as you mentioned earlier, the Pirate Party participated in the parliamentary elections of 2012 and in last year’s European elections, but in addition, the Pirate Party also participated in a number of local and municipal electoral contests as well. How do you characterize the resonance of the Pirate Party amongst the Greek public?

TG: I must say that our party has gained some momentum which is increasingly evident from day to day. From a small statistical survey which we conducted, we’ve determined that out of every 10 new households in Greece which connect to the internet, we gain 2 to 3 new voters. This is one positive which I can share with you at this time, that even without us necessarily doing anything, despite the fact that we are quite active as a party, our popularity is growing, because our efforts are visible through the Internet. The Internet is the only medium which remains completely free, because unfortunately the mass media is biased and aligned with specific political parties for specific reasons. The only medium which has remained free and open is the Internet, both for information and for entertainment, and because we are in favor of net neutrality and an open internet, free of political or other biases, we are gaining in popularity. Aside from this, with our ongoing actions within Greek society and our participation in various organizations and dialogues that are taking place and with joint positions that we have developed with other parties and organizations, we have attained a resonance which continues to grow. For example, prior to the European parliamentary elections last year, the Ecologist-Green party approached us for an electoral collaboration, it was their proposal which we accepted after a vote of our members, who have final say in such matters. What I am trying to say is that other political forces in Greece and Greek society as a whole now view us as a serious, responsible and well-organized political force.

MN: Aside from your collaboration with the Ecologists-Greens in last year’s European parliamentary elections, you also formed a collaboration with the mayor of Athens, Georgios Kaminis, for last year’s municipal elections. How has this collaboration worked out?

TG: What I’d like to say first is that we participated in the electoral ballot of Mr. Kaminis, the mayor of Athens, in last year’s elections, while in the city of Thessaloniki we had our own autonomous candidacy and did rather well, approaching 2% of the vote. In other cities and regions throughout Greece we participated in a number of electoral collaborations. For instance, in the city of Halkida, we participated in the electoral candidacy of the incumbent and current mayor, while in the regional elections of the Peloponesse we collaborated with the Green party. In Athens we did quite well and we played a role in helping Mr. Kaminis attain a lead of 1 to 1.5% of the vote in the first round of voting, thanks to the votes received from the members of the Pirate Party and through our campaigning efforts, particularly through the internet. At the present time, we are participating in various social efforts that are being organized by the municipality of Athens, and are also participating in municipal committees which pertain to schools and education. We are also in discussions to begin a radio program on the municipal radio station. Another thing that we have done is that members of the Pirate Party have worked on a piece of open source software known as Fix My Street, they have translated it into Greek and we have proposed it to various municipalities throughout Greece, including Athens. This is a completely free piece of software with no cost to the municipalities or to the citizens. It is an app which anyone will be able to download on their mobile phone once it is ready, as we have just presented it to the city council of Athens and to various deputy mayors, and what this app does is that a citizen who notices any quality-of-life issue on the street, whether it is excessive garbage, or a stray animal, or an accident or anything else, can immediately take a photo and send it through the app to the appropriate municipal agency, who will then investigate the issue and keep the citizen informed about their report through this app or through their computer. This is more or less what we are doing with the municipality of Athens, our collaboration is going well and it is based on mutual trust and understanding, and I believe that it was a very good choice for the Pirate Party.

MN: We are on the air with Thanasis Gounaris of the Pirate Party of Greece here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series, and Thanasi, the Pirate Party did not participate in this year’s parliamentary elections. Why did the party choose not to participate this year?

TG: This is actually a very long story, and I will try to summarize it as best I can. This may actually be the first time that this story is being told in its entirety. Immediately after last year’s European parliamentary elections, where we did rather well, attaining almost 1% of the vote, we almost immediately, within a week, began to reach out to all of the other political parties which did not make it into the European Parliament, because we firmly believe that everyone must be represented in parliament. We held two meetings in the Intellectual Center of the Municipality of Athens with all of the parties which did not get voted into parliament, with the goal of creating a broad-based coalition that would be able to shoot for electoral success. Many parties responded to our call, initially about 15 parties in all. Through the summer we remained in discussions and close contact with about 10 of these parties. We decided upon a name, a logo, we developed a constitution, a code of conduct, and a founding manifesto for this coalition, and we had even decided, more or less, how our candidacies would be broken down across different regions of Greece, how they would be divided amongst the parties. At the last minute though, in late December, the first party which had responded to our call and which had received 1.4% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections, the Hellenes European Citizens party of Mr. Hatzimarkakis, backed out, because Mr. Hatzimarkakis decided at the last minute that he wanted to shoot for a career with a major party, and even though he had participated in our discussions from day one and despite us trying to explain to him that what he wanted to do was a mistake, he decided to back out. So we lost one party, and this created a bit of a problem within our coalition, while the very next day, yet another party, for reasons that are not clear, also backed out. This was the Dimiourgia Xana political party. So in the end, 7 or 8 parties remained, and we were the biggest one, with almost 1% of the vote. But despite the support we received from our members for this initiative, after these two parties departed, our plans changed, and because there was not very much time remaining before the elections to collect money in order to participate, because it was January and our members hadn’t paid their annual dues yet and two parties which had pledged some funds decided to back out, we decided not to participate. Most of the other parties in this coalition also did not participate for the same reasons. One party though which did participate was the Centrists Union of Vasilis Leventis, and what I can say is that many of our voters supported the Centrists Union, and this is likely one reason why it approached 2% of the vote in the elections. We supported them unofficially because this particular party had one characteristic which the other parties lacked, which was a strong anti-corruption platform. And since we are very much in favor of transparency, it is a given that we are against corruption, and we felt that this part of their platform resonated with our own positions to a large extent. So one reason we did not participate was financial, another reason was the lack of time to regroup and prepare after the departure of two parties from our coalition. We could not put our party and our voters in a position to support, financially, an electoral campaign under these circumstances, especially since Greek society was also heavily polarized between the two leading parties, SYRIZA and New Democracy. We decided to let this situation play out, we are closely monitoring it, and we are preparing for the next electoral contest which we believe will not be too long from now.

MN: Do you believe that it is possible for this broad coalition of small parties to be developed once again?

TG: Absolutely, because the hope and change promised by SYRIZA, while it hasn’t been extinguished in its entirety yet, it is heading in that direction. As a result, there is a large percentage of voters who are not SYRIZA supporters but who voted for SYRIZA in the last elections in order to oust the previously governing parties, who is now seeing that nothing is changing but who is likely unwilling to go back to vote for the two traditional parties, New Democracy and PASOK. We all saw what happened with the Democratic Left party, which collaborated with these two parties when they were in government. I should say here that the Democratic Left party here did actually reach out to us for an electoral collaboration, as did the Green party, proposals which our party members voted to reject. We could, in other words, have collaborated with these parties but the decision from our members was negative. I do believe though that this coalition could be resurrected again in the future, and there are actions being taken and discussions taking place, but this time they are taking place in secrecy, so that they are not subject to any external interference and in order to end up being a last-minute surprise. Because now, honestly, because this effort at a broad-based coalition received so much publicity, part of which was our fault, various problems appeared which ended up dashing our hopes. Another thing that I would like to say is that there were major political figures who also approached us about being a part of this coalition, such as the former member of parliament with the Democratic Left and with PASOK Vasilis Oikonomou, which we rejected.

MN: In what way does the Pirate Party evaluate the actions undertaken by Greece’s new government after almost two months in office, especially in light of their pre-election promises and pledges?

TG: The truth is that we are abstaining from adopting any firm position for now, we are allowing some time to go by first to see where things will end up. As a result, we don’t have an official position at the moment. Many of our members are beginning to become uneasy with the government’s broken promises on a number of issues, while other members are adopting a wait-and-see approach. My personal position on this lies somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t bother me so much that certain things aren’t happening, as much as the fact that certain promises are not being kept. It is much worse to promise 100 things and deliver on three of those, than to promise three things and to deliver on all three. That’s where my problem lies. Either the new government didn’t know what it would do once in office, which I don’t believe is the case, or they are completely amateurish. What bothers me is that the hopes of much of the Greek public are not being realized, and my fear is that many people who want change, since they are not seeing the current government deliver such change, might decide to move in the completely opposite direction, to other extreme political forces. I believe you know which party I am talking about. That is why I believe that it is important for us to develop another political force, for all of us who believe in transparency, in democracy, in clear operations and in clear positions, to develop the broad-based coalition which we were unable to form for the previous elections and to provide an alternative to Greek society, so that our country can stand on its feet again instead of merely relying upon hope.

MN: We are on the air with Thanasis Gounaris of the Pirate Party of Greece here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series, and Thanasi, one of the biggest issues that the Pirate Party is involved with are issues pertaining to the free and open internet, issues regarding new technologies, and issues pertaining to transparency. How do you evaluate Greece’s national policies as far as these issues, and what proposals does the Pirate Party have for things that could be changed with regard to these issues in Greece?

TG: With regards to transparency, what I can say is that many of the decisions which have been undertaken and many of the discussions which have taken place in recent years on a political level have occurred without the public being informed. There have been major changes made to laws, major reforms which have been passed without the public having a clear picture of what was happening. Everything is being done under a cloak of secrecy, where nobody knows where decisions are being made, who is making these decisions, and for what reason. All of this is rather untransparent, and as a result, we as the Pirate Party propose that all political decisions that are made should be done in such a way that the citizens have an opportunity to participate. This is why I was saying earlier that we have not been consulted on anything. For example, if many citizens feel that a certain law that solves a certain problem should be passed, they should have the option to collect signatures, either electronically or on paper, to submit, let’s say, 100,000 or 300,000 signatures to the parliament, and to force the parliament to debate this proposal and to make a decision. Additionally, if a law is passed which receives a lot of opposition amongst members of the public, then citizens could collect signatures and perhaps call a referendum on the issue and call the parliament into taking action on this issue. In order for there to be transparency, it is not enough for laws and government documents to be posted on the Internet, because many times unrelated amendments and articles are buried deep within an unrelated law and go unnoticed. Everything needs to operate with transparency and with the participation of the citizens. Something else that is also important and which could allow the Greek state to save a lot of money is if the entire Greek state apparatus, in schools and government agencies and so forth, begin to use open-source software. We should not be required to pay Microsoft or any other company to purchase operating systems or office software or the like when there is free, open-source software which can be used, without any cost, and which in many cases is of better quality. And in addition, a lot of this open-source software would allow older computers to be used, which currently cannot keep up with the constant updates of software such as Windows. All of this is related and it creates massive expenditures for the state. Many computers could use free, open-source software, freeing up public funds. One other idea that we had which we enforced within our own party is, for many of our members, since some of them did not have the financial means to pay their dues to the party, to make their computers available to mint Litecoins or Bitcoins, digital electronic currency in other words. Government agencies, after they shut down in the afternoon, often leave their computers running, and since they leave the computers on anyway, they could use those computers to mint electronic currency.

MN: From what I understand, aside from your position in the Pirate Party, you are an educator in a school in central Athens. In what way would you say that the economic crisis has impacted the quality of education and the operation of schools in Greece, and in addition, how has the crisis impacted the students and their families?

TG: What I can say is that in my 30 years as an educator, what I have seen happen these past 4 or 5 years is without precedent. There are children who come to school having eaten one meal the previous day, perhaps consisting of plain rice or bread. About 20 to 30% of their families do not have anyone that is employed. As a result, what we have done these past two years is to request the assistance of the Greek state at first, which however turned its back to us, initially denying that there was such a crisis in Greek schools, that there were students who were hungry and who were fainting, claiming that this was an exaggeration, even though we were seeing this happen every day. As a result, we were forced to turn to private initiative, despite us not wanting to do so, in order to attain support for the students and their families. We requested assistance from the municipality of Athens, and from the church as well. So right now, for the second year in a row, we have secured for our almost 450 students meals that are being delivered through a non-profit organization, Prolipsis, which is affiliated with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Each day, over 400 containers of milk and yogurt are delivered to our school, as well as sandwiches and fruit, enabling students to have something to eat and to be able to concentrate in their studies as a result. If someone came to our school two years ago, they would not have heard any children screaming our shouting, they were all exhausted and worn out from hunger. There was a situation where you would have thought that something serious had happened, that they were all suffering from some serious illness. They were unable to follow their coursework. Now though things are different. Last year, we also had 80 to 100 portions of hot food delivered to our school daily through the municipality, for students who remained in school late. And even now, we have 30 containers of food which are delivered to us and which are given to the families of students, which come from the NGO Apostoli, which is funded by the Church of Greece and the Archdiocese. In this way, we have been able to develop a safety net for these families and for these students and the situation now is a bit better. One final situation that I will mention happened just a few days ago. Most houses in Greece no longer have heat, because families cannot afford oil or natural gas. In many cases they perhaps have an electric heater, if they even use that. So we had a family where one of the children was asleep, the parents opened an electric heater to keep warm, and the mother stepped out to pick up her other two children from school, and what happened was that the child at home woke up and knocked over the electric heater, causing a fire which completely destroyed their apartment and which almost killed the child, who had to be rescued by firefighters and the police. Everything in the home was destroyed, but we were able to offer our assistance and support, reaching out to people here in the neighborhood, finding them a new apartment to rent, donated furniture, clothes, blankets, and other items. We were able to allow this family to rebuild. And unfortunately these are daily occurrences here in our area and throughout all of Greece. The economic crisis has had extremely adverse impacts on the country, and unfortunately the European people either do not understand this or choose not to care, which is extremely unfortunate. But at the same time, no government here in Greece, not even the current government, is doing anything to turn this situation around.

MN: We are on the air with Thanasis Gounaris of the Pirate Party of Greece here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series, and Thanasi, there is also the issue of bullying in schools, which we saw again recently with the suicide of student Vaggelis Giakoumakis. How do you respond, as an educator, to this phenomenon?

TG: What I will say is that we are in favor of the peaceful resolution of conflict and differences, whether it is between students, between families, or between citizens in general. Violence only leads to more violence, which is then transferred onto somebody else, or onto ourselves, as was the case with the apparent suicide of this student, Giakoumakis. These issues, however, need to be resolved at a very early age and at the start of a person’s life. For example, in my school, there is a tremendous percentage of students, about 70 to 80%, who are immigrants or children of immigrants who were born in Greece. We have developed in our school various facilities in which difference can be understood and resolved. For example, when we have a student who is not performing well with their studies or is facing a learning disability or some sort of psychological issue, we have developed a special unit in our school with special teachers who work directly with these students every day in order to allow them to overcome the issues that they are facing and to be brought back along with the rest of the student body, without fear of being bullied or harassed by any other students. That is one issue. The other issue is that we also have children who were born in other countries and who do not speak Greek or speak it very poorly, and in order for them not to be the target of other students, we have developed Greek as a second language classes with a special teacher, allowing them to quickly pick up the language and to soon begin taking classes with the rest of the students without a problem. If you undertake such actions and maintain a very calm and collected response to the various mischievous actions of the students, and show flexibility with both the parents and the educators and everyone that is generally involved, then you create a sort-of team effort and a pedagogical climate which is positive and in which it is extremely difficult to cause any problems. There will always be small fights and disagreements, but it is here where you must have the experience and the knowledge to determine what is a serious issue and what is something that you can simply allow to blow over. Here in my school we have about 450 students and fortunately we do not have any serious issues of bullying or violence amongst the students. There are, however, cases of bullying which take place outside of the school, which unfortunately we cannot respond to, and of course there is the issue of domestic violence as well, which also needs attention. Due to the crisis in particular in recent years, there is an increase in cases of domestic violence in households, and this is what happens when there is poverty and unemployment and people are scrambling from day to day figuring out how to survive. The children are often witnesses to such violence, and that is why there needs to be a level of support for them and trained personnel who can deal with these issues when they arise. At our school, even though it is in a very poor area of Athens with lots of immigrants, an area which has changed considerably and shockingly over the past 10 years, we continue to support each other, to maintain the peace, to provide a quality education, and I can say that I am especially happy that within such a difficult situation we have managed some good things.

MN: In closing, where can our listeners find out more information about the Pirate Party in Greece, its positions, and its actions and initiatives?

TG: They can visit our main website, www.pirateparty.gr, they can find the website for the Pirates in Education, www.piratedu.gr, as well as the website for the Pirates in Athens, at www.piratesinathens.gr, and they can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. We have a forum on our main website, where there is a section that is open to the public, as well as a section which anybody can read but which is only open to our members to participate in. All of our party procedures are open and transparent. We’ve developed a mobile app for Android devices which allow users to be informed about everything that we do, and I should mention that all of our central meetings of our board, which are held at least once per month, are broadcast live over the internet, are open for anyone to participate in if they request it, and after the meetings, we post the recordings as well as the transcripts of these meetings online on our wiki, as is, without any editing or changes, allowing any member of the public to find out what we have to say, what was said, and what decisions were made, in any of our past meetings. This is extremely important as no other political party does this. There is no such transparency, nor will there be, from any other party in Greece. We are very proud of this, we have nothing to hide, we are ordinary people and citizens who want to change things for the better without going in a left or right-wing direction. We just want positive change, a different and better society that will move forward, with cultural understanding and peace between nations. That is why we are also in favor of open borders, of a Europe where all member-states will not have borders between each other. And anybody can also find out about the actions of the European Pirate Party and our member in the European Parliament, Julia Reda, as all of the documentation is available online and translated, in terms of what the European Pirate Party has to say about Europe. This is very important. We were a part of this process from the very establishment of the Pirate Party and were influential in many of the positions that were adopted, and anybody can go online and read and find out how different and how progressive we are compared to many other parties which unfortunately want to take us back to a previous time.

MN: Well Thanasi, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today here on Dialogos Radio, and best of luck with your efforts.

TG: Thank you for having me, Michael.

Please excuse any typos or errors which may exist within this transcript.