For one more time, Greece stands on the edge of crossroads that will determine her near future. The only reason we don’t see it in the headlines is because Trump monopolizes them. The constantly battling Greek government has one week left to break the increasingly difficult deadlock with its creditors, EU and IMF simultaneously, otherwise Grexit is back on the table and the country is once more set for general elections.

The fact that Greece has been out of the headlines the last few months doesn’t mean that much has changed for the small Mediterranean nation. Unemployment might have dropped from 25-26% to 24.7% but at the same time prices have increased even in necessary goods while incomes keep decreasing. 20% of the Greek population remains below the poverty line and there are more than 30,000 homeless people, including families, only in the Greek capital. These numbers are just an indication on what is going on this minute in Greece and all the signs, after nine years of hard recession, show that recovery is nowhere near. On the contrary, IMF two weeks ago predicted that the Greek debt crisis will become absolutely explosive by 2030 if nothing happens soon.

The fact is that the Greek debt has nearly doubled the last six years and there is no way for a payback under these circumstances. The only solution to end the problem is radical cuts from the creditors. Greece is a poor, mainly agricultural country and there is nothing more to cut. The Greek people are at their limits. Period. There is no way to further cut pensions or increase taxes in a country with a verified 20% of its population living below the poverty line. Plus it doesn’t really matter how much the government increase tax, people cannot pay it anymore; nearly 70% of the population is in debt with the government already. You cannot take from the one who doesn’t have any left, it doesn’t matter what IMF, EU or any creditor wish or demand.

What has the Tsipras government done? Very little. And this is again a fact. But the question is if this government could have done something. They tried to help the pensioners at Christmas with a small amount of extra money and all that became a huge negotiation issue with the creditors and IMF that in the end nearly led to the cancelation of the last payment from the EU help. Could they increase the layoffs from the civil services? Perhaps. But how that would help a state that barely manages to work with the civil servants it has now, a health system in ruins and the definite increase of unemployment? Stop spending money in education or in health will help how? And that while the debt keeps increasing with the responsibility of the same ones who supposedly try to save Greece, first in the cue the IMF?

And all that while the Greek opposition agrees with the creditors and the hard-liners of the German economic ministry named Wolfgang Schäuble? The opposition which as government the last forty years is absolutely responsible for the decadence of the Greek economy, wrapped in corruption and misinformation?

The opposition accuses Mr Tsipras for populism based on the fact that he did promise before elected that he will negotiate with the creditors, confident that he could persuade them with his fair arguments and he gave economic promises to the people he could never fulfil under the circumstances, feeding them lies and illusions. This is true but Tsipras has also has his excuses. First of all he didn’t realize before becoming Prime Minister that the creditors didn’t give a damn if a whole nation was going into ruin. Actually he didn’t even realize that some of them had invested in a Greek bankruptcy. His second mistake was that he didn’t believe in the alternative – a life outside the euro-zone – and this in the end killed all his arguments. He didn’t have anything left to negotiate with. If he wanted Greece in the Eurozone he had to compromise in everything the creditors demanded. It was an unconditional surrender. The only option left, after the surrender, was to cheat some money or favours, here and there, so he could help the weaker in Greece. And actually that’s exactly what he has done since.

Regarding to his never kept promises, I think his mistake was that he could never believe what he was going to receive from Samaras government. Antonis Samaras was exactly what the then president of the Euro-parliament Martin Schulz, had said about him: the wolf we hired to protect the sheep.

Antonis Samaras was perhaps one of the two most corrupted Greek Prime Ministers since WWII (minus the dictatorship 1967-1974). If the man and his gang had stayed a bit more in power they would have privatized even Acropolis. Surrounded by a gang of fascists and supporters of the dictatorship with extremist/terrorism past which he never denounced, like Makis Voridis and the essence of Greek populism, Adonis Georgiadis he sold Greek land for free and national banks and institutions to privateers for pennies. Adonis Georgiadis literally destroyed the Greek Health system just to make it easy for privateers to enter. While Antonis Samaras conservative party (Nea Dimokratia) was responsible for the economic crisis with governments, Samaras participated as leading minister he was chosen to help the nation exit the crisis. And he did his best for his personal, his gang’s and his friends’ future.

This is what Tsipras never saw coming. He actually believed, like most normal people would, that despite political differences, everybody – left or right – aims for the best of the country and the people. Samaras and his corrupted gang didn’t.

Among Samaras’ gang there was one who took the responsibility to destroy the public sector, privatize services and perhaps laundry scandals. Scandals that some included his name. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Minister of Administrative Reform and e-Governance at Samaras government. Son of a former Prime Minister mostly known in Greece for betraying his leader and with his betrayal opening the door to the dictators in 1967, brother of a former Foreign Minister and today an MP, uncle of a prominent politician with prime ministerial ambitions. I suppose this is what we call nepotism and is popular in fascist and corrupted regimes.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis apart from the fact that he was Samaras’ henchman in one of the two most corrupted Greek governments he was also involved in the Siemens’s scandal for bribes. But here comes the twist. The only witness that can verify the role and the prices of the bribes has escaped Greece avoiding courts and uncomfortable questions. The other coincidence? It happens that this man was friend with Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ sister, Dora Bakoyannis, the former Foreign Minister and today MP with the same party.

This man, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is now the leader of the opposition and the man who accuses Tsipras for populism and incapability. Here there are some more things worth to mention. During the period Tsipras took over and he started negotiating with the creditors, EU and IMF, Mitsotakis was one of those pressing him to accept everything offered to him without any objections. Actually nowadays close to a very critical crossroads Mitsotakis and his renewed Samaras gang (exactly the same people) are boycotting the negotiations even speaking with the other side and giving promises in exchange of a no agreement that will lead into general elections and bring Mitsotakis in the Prime Ministerial seat to finish the sell-out he didn’t manage to do before with Samaras. He has gone so far to try to negotiate behind the actual Greek prime minister’s back with Wolfgang Schäuble in a very promoted by his gang visit to Berlin the day of Saint Valentine, how he will act as prime minister and how Schäuble can help him succeed. I’m leaving the characterizations to your choice.

So, the man with the nick-name Koulis, which semantically means somebody not worthy – half a man, asks foreign help to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister, using every possible tool even if that means the destruction of his own country, just to become prime minister.

After all that, what really constitutes a dangerous populist in the dimensions of Donald Trump?