Financial Times Europe - 04.04.2020 - 05.04.2020

4 April/5 April 2020 ★ † FTWeekend 7

Manolis Glezos carved out a niche in

2 0th-century European history on the

strength of one bold act of defiance

against Greece’s Nazi occupiers during

thesecondworldwar.

On the night of May 30 1941, he and

his friend Apostolos Santas, both aged

18, tore down a giant swastika flag flying

overtheAcropolishillincentralAthens.

The pair made a successful getaway

while a group of German soldiers were

drinking and singing nearby, celebrat-

ing the Third Reich’s capture of the

island of Crete. Glezos gave his mother a

square of the ripped cloth to explain

whyhewasoutsolate.

Coming only a few weeks after the

Germans invaded Greece, the escapade

impressed the Allied forces and became

an enduring symbol of anti-fascist

resistance. For Glezos, who has died

aged 97, it marked the start of a 75-year

careerinleftwingpolitics.

On Christmas Day in 1944, Glezos, by

thenaseasonedmemberofthecommu-

nist-led resistance movement EAM,

crawled through a sewer beneath the

Grande Bretagne Hotel in Athens, the

headquarters of the British military

mission to Greece, his body wrapped

aroundwithfusewireintendedtosetoff

abomb.TheGermanshadwithdrawnin

October and the British government

planned to negotiate a deal with EAM’s

rag-tag army, that had stepped in to fill

the vacuum, and then re-establish the

Greek monarchy. But the UK’s credibil-

ity was fatally damaged when British

soldiers fired on demonstrators in cen-

tral Athens in early December, trigger-

ing a leftwing revolt that resulted in a

five-yearcivilwar.

The attack was called off at the last

minute when news broke that the UK

prime minister Winston Churchill was

flying to Athens that night to broker a

deal with EAM and would stay at the

hotel. “We were standing there with the

detonator, waiting for the signal. It

nevercame,”Glezostoldaninterviewer.

“I think the EAM leaders didn’t want to

be responsible for assassinating one of

the Big Three (Churchill, US president

Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin,

theSovietleader).”

Glezos was born in 1922 on the island

of Naxos. He moved to Athens with

his family, worked in a pharmacy and

began studying for an economics

degree. But he gave up to join the resist-

ance. Later, as the editor of Rizospastis,

the newspaper of the banned Comm-

unistparty,hebecameaneasytargetfor

the nationalist politicians who rebuilt

the country with the help of funds from

the US Marshall plan. He survived four

death sentences (all commuted), mult-

iple spells of imprisonment for political

crimes and a battle with tuberculosis

thatlefthimwithonelung.

“In prison he read and wrote con-

stantly — one of his books was an analy-

sis of the language spoken by his

guards,” says Lee Sarafi, a friend who

regularly drove him to Strasbourg when

he served as the oldest member of the

European Parliament, representing the

leftwing Syriza government. “It took

three days to get there and we’d talk all

the way. Manolis was endlessly ener-

geticandalwaysoptimistic.”

Glezos joined the breakaway pro-

EuropeanwingoftheGreekCommunist

partyin1968followingabittersplitwith

its Stalinist leaders. The division pres-

aged a shift by Glezos and like-minded

activists towards a less confrontational

politics that gained traction after the

restorationofdemocracyin1974.

Elected to parliament in 1981 with the

PanHellenic Socialist Movement of

Andreas Papandreou, a US-trained

economistwithMarxistleanings,Glezos

began to pursue a personal dream of

uniting the country’s leftwing splinter

groups into a single progressive party.

That was unsuccessful, but he managed

to transcend party politics in his later

years. With his distinctive mane of

white hair and battered seaman’s cap,

hebecomeapopularelderstatesman.

He moved back to his home village of

Apeiranthos, winning election as com-

munity president in the late 1980s and

launched a small experiment in partici-

patorydemocracy,afavouriteidea.

Everyone in the village over the age of

12 had the right to speak and vote in a

new village assembly. About 150 out of

1,000 villagers regularly took part. It

was, he said, “a much better system

than when we were just seven council-

lorstakingallthedecisions”.

Glezos willingly accepted invitations

from schools and local associations to

speak about the resistance. But he shied

away from talking about tearing down

the flag, preferring to recount his com-

rades’ exploits. He explained: “Back in

those days, we’d ask each other to raise

a glass and keep our memory alive if

we were executed. I’m the only one left

todoit.”

Kerin Hope

Obituary

An incurable

optimist who

fought to unite

the Greek left

Manolis Glezos

Activist and politician

1922-

He survived four death

sentences, multiple spells

of imprisonment for

political crimes, and

a battle with tuberculosis

Glezos willingly accepted invitations

to speak about the resistance

The next stop for the pandemic

W

ara Mendoza sells

remote controls in El

Alto, a sprawling and

impoverished satellite

city of the Bolivian

capital, La Paz. Her mother hawks

salteñameat pies in the outdoor market

and her father drives a taxi along its

streets. Now, with armoured vehicles in

the neighbourhood imposing a lock-

down, none of her family is supposed to

beoutside.

“I understand the fight against coro-

navirus, but it is hard to enforce in a

place where we need to go to sell every

day in order to eat,” says the 25-year-

old, who is one of millions of Bolivian

workers struggling to survive as

the informal economy lurches to a

standstill.

After weeks in which prosperous

countries from Italy to the US have bat-

tled both the pandemic and its eco-

nomic fallout, the fight against corona-

virus is moving to a new front. Across

Africa,LatinAmericaandmuchofAsia,

governments with far less firepower

than their western counterparts are fig-

uring out how to keep the pandemic at

bayandtheireconomiesafloat.

It is not clear they can do both. With

Europe and the US, the virus arrived

first, forcing a public health response,

and then — as the enormity of the crisis

struck home — a massive fiscal and

monetary injection. In much of the

developing world, the sequence has

happened in reverse, with the economic

devastation of coronavirus arriving

beforetheepidemicitself.

States that were already financially

stretched have been hit by the sudden

stop of global economic activity, depriv-

ing them of the wherewithal to mount

anything like a western-style response.

Oil exporters in Africa and Latin Amer-

ica have watched the price of Brent

crudecollapsefrom$70abarrelinJanu-

ary to less than $30 this week, leaving

theirbudgetsintatters.

Emerging market assets have been

dumped on a scale never seen before.

According to the Institute of Interna-

tional Finance, foreign investors have

withdrawn $95bn from stocks and

bondssincetheywokeuptothecrisison

January 21. That is four times the out-

flows in the same period after the start

ofthe2008globalfinancialcrisis.

As capital is pouring out, remittances

— the lifeblood of economies from the

Philippines to Nigeria — are dwindling.

Many foreign workers in western cities,

especially those working as hotel staff,

chefsordrivers,havelosttheirjobs.

It does not stop there. With flights

cancelled, Kenyan farmers can no

longer sell cut flowers or mange touts to

Europeansupermarkets.

Tourism has collapsed. Sites such as

Machu Picchu in Peru are closed. East

Africa’s game parks are deserted. In

Thailand, keepers say that without

tourist revenue to pay for food their ele-

phantsriskstarvation.

India was already in a protracted

slowdown when the country’s coronavi-

rus caseload began to climb at the start

of March. But Prime Minister Narendra

Modi’s abrupt decision to impose a 21-

day nationwide curfew has thrown the

economyintoatailspin.

Mr Modi gave no warning of the

impending lockdown, making it impos-

sible for businesses to maintain even

skeletal operations. That has ruptured

supplychainsforessentialitemssuchas

foodandpharmaceuticals,soapanddis-

infectant. Capital Economics forecasts

that India, with its 1.4bn people, will

grow at just 1 per cent in 2020 — that

would be its worst performance in four

decades.

mean the death rate is actually higher.

Bill Gates has warned that 10m people

could die in Africa if the virus is not con-

tained, while Imperial College London

estimated the global death toll — which

at the moment is under 60,000 — would

have reached 40m had the world not

responded.

That leaves developing countries

struggling to figure out how to balance

the public health response with the risk

of economic collapse. Cyril Ramaphosa,

South Africa’s president, last week

imposed a three-week lockdown before

asinglecoronavirusdeath.

In Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, authori-

ties have stopped short of a full lock-

down, instead imposing social distanc-

ing and a nightly curfew. Patrick Gath-

ara, a Kenyan political cartoonist, won-

ders if a western-style shutdown is

sustainable or whether people will

rebel. “It’s all very well to say lockdown,

but what does it mean if people are

starvingintheirhouses?”heasks.

Dele Olojede, a Nigerian Pulitzer

Prize-winning journalist now living in

South Africa, says he understands the

dilemma.“Inshantytownsortownships

people don’t have the wherewithal to

stockpile food and social isolation is

physically impossible,” he says. Yet he

still thinks that lockdowns of limited

durationmayhelpbuytime.

He has been impressed at the deci-

siveness of the South African govern-

ment, which last week sent out a fleet of

67 shiny white coronavirus-testing vans

capable of processing results in 45 min-

utes. In Nigeria, which was quick to

snuff out an Ebola outbreak in 2014,

authorities were carefully scanning

patients at Lagos airport in February

when travellers were still breezing

uncheckedthroughUSairports.

Still, Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezue-

lan development economist at Harvard

University, is not holding out great

hope. “The situation in the advanced

economies is likely to be much more

benign than what developing countries

arefacing.”

Calls for global support

Ms Okonjo-Iweala, chair of Gavi, the

Vaccine Alliance, says the health and

economic impacts are intertwined: “If

we don’t deal appropriately with the

health part, the economics are going to

fallcompletelyapart.”

She is impressed by the range of

measures mustered on her own conti-

nent, including emergency spending,

taxcutsandexperimentswithquantita-

tive easing. Some African countries are

planning mobile money transfers to

peoplestrugglingtosurvive.

“But if you look at the extent of the

measures they’ve taken, it’s about 0.

per cent of gross domestic product,” she

says.“Theydon’thavethefiscalspaceto

beabletodoverymuch.Forthesecoun-

tries to come out of it, you need to look

atsomethinglikeastimulusintherange

of those mounted in the west — say 10

percentofGDP.”

Kristalina Georgieva, managing

director of the IMF, estimates that

emerging countries may need as much

as$2.5tninsupport.

If the magnitude of the crisis for

developingcountriesisfarworsethanin

2008, so far the international response

has been less impressive. Rich countries

have battened down the hatches as they

fight the pandemic themselves. The US

and China, the two global superpowers,

have bickered over the cause and origin

of the global spread, hampering an

internationalresponse.

The IMF has taken some action, mak-

ing $50bn available in quick-release

funds for which 85 countries have

already applied. Unctad, the UN’s trade

and development agency, is calling for

an immediate issuance of $1tn in new

special drawing rights, a proxy for for-

eign reserves, and for the richest coun-

tries to pool their allocations and make

themavailabletothepoorest.

Richard Kozul-Wright, Unctad’s

director of development strategies, says

advanced economies should see this not

as a humanitarian gesture but as an act

of self-insurance. “If the outbreak really

does catch hold in the south, there’s no

way the advanced economies will be

abletostoptheblowback.”

Vera Songwe, executive secretary of

the UN Economic Commission for

Africa, worries that food inflation could

spark riots across the developing world.

She is disappointed with the global

response. “If we need an example of

what the lack of multilateralism looks

like, we’re seeing it today,” she says. “If

oneofushasthevirus,allofushaveit.”

Mr Hausmann says developing econ-

omies have been left in the lurch both in

terms of their ability to fight the pan-

demic and to counter its economic

impact. Even in the best of times, he

says, they are financially stretched.

“And these,” he points out, “are not the

bestoftimes.”

Additional reporting by Jonathan

Wheatley

FT BIG READ. CORONAVIRUS

Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, governments with far less firepower than their counterparts in

the west are fighting to keep coronavirus at bay and their economies afloat. Some fear a catastrophe.

By David Pilling, Andres Schipani and Amy Kazmin

Even in Brazil, where President Jair

Bolsonaro has scoffed at the virus as a

mere “sniffle”, governors in regions cov-

ering 200m of the country’s 210m peo-

ple are closing non-essential businesses

andcallingonpeopletostayhome.

Vulnerable health systems

After the economic crisis came the virus

itself. Africa, which had practically no

cases a month ago, now has more than

7,000, with clusters of infections in

almost every one of its 54 countries.

Cases in Brazil alone quadrupled in the

past week to more than 8,000. While

that is still behind Europe and the US,

the numbers are rising rapidly and pub-

lic health experts worry the pandemic

could tear through tightly packed slums

andinformalsettlementsinsomecities.

Nor do poorer countries have robust

health systems. Africa is the worst off.

Governmentsonthecontinentspendan

average per capita of $12 a year on

healthcomparedwith$4,000intheUK,

according to the OECD. “Everybody is

talking about ventilators,” says Ngozi

Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian

finance minister. “I hear some countries

havelessthan100.”

Some experts hope that generally

younger populations will limit the

number of fatalities. Africa has a

median age of 19.4 against 40 in Europe.

Of the continent’s 1.2bn people, only

about 50m are over 60. In India, the

medianageis27.InLatinAmerica,31.

There is also speculation that the

virus might spread more slowly in hot

and humid climates, though evidence

for this is patchy. Set against that are the

number of people who are malnour-

ished or whose immune systems are

compromised by HIV and other condi-

tions, especially in Africa. That could

‘If we need an example of

what the lack of

multilateralism looks

like, we’re seeing it today.

If one of us has the virus,

all of us have it’

Vera Songwe, executive secretary of

the UN Economic Commission for

Africa, below

‘In shantytowns or

townships people do not

have the wherewithal to

stockpile food and social

isolation is physically

impossible’

Dele Olojede, Nigerian journalist

Commuters hold on to the side of

an overcrowded passenger train in

Soweto, a few weeks before a

three-week lockdown was

imposed in South Africa to

prevent the spread of coronavirus

ThembaHadebe/APPhoto

$1tn

Inspecialdrawing

rightsthattheIMF

hasbeenurgedby

theUNtoissue

$50bn

Inquick-release

IMFfunds,forwhich

85nationshave

alreadyapplied

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