On the 25th of January this year, the left in Greece won an extraordinary victory. Syriza, founded officially in 2004, had received 36.3% of the vote share and 149/300 seats in the Greek parliament. The new government, consisting of a coalition between Syriza and Independent Greeks, promised to ditch austerity and stand up for the people of Greece in the face of years of humiliation and inferior economics.

And yet today, Greece has once again been utterly humiliated by the powerful Troika – the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Commission – and faces three more years of what has been before, but with even more emphasis on tax hikes, privatisation, cuts and asset selling. The Greek people, once again, are being made to endure absurd austerity for something crony politicians and bankers did years ago. And the Troika could not care less. They are intent on making a political statement that will further damage the lives of ordinary Greeks. The problem is they don’t even believe that their own form of austerity will work; the IMF themselves released a document today highlighting how they expect the Greece debt to GDP ratio to reach 170% by 2022, which is significantly worse than the 142% that was predicted two weeks ago – before Greece and the Troika came to an agreement. Rather, the Troika is intent on fully receiving all the money they lent out to debt-ridden counties, even if it means crippling their economies. Germany – who have been overly-influential in recent negotiations, to the angst of many – and the Troika, are making sure that they are not portrayed as lenient money lenders.

In the process of making this political statement, however, not only have they impoverished an entire nation, but they have simultaneously denied it democracy. They have stripped Greece of its financial sovereignty by enforcing their own preferred financial legislation upon it. Greece elected an anti-austerity party in January but have had it stolen from them. Instead, they have been left with a divided party that has been forced to agree to humiliating and regressive demands. The Troika could easily have agreed to what Syriza was rightfully demanding at one stage – debt restructuring and relief, pension protection and no rise in VAT levels – without enforcing ridiculous austerity upon the broken nation. They portrayed the Greek government as the awkward, selfish contingent but, in fact, it was themselves that were being unreasonable by not agreeing to Greece’s terms. Syriza had an electoral mandate to demand what they did; the Troika simply did so to prove a point. Tsipras and his party have been bullied into an unfair deal that contradicts the very reason they exist.

As a result of the Troika’s despicable treatment of Greece, the image that the EU and the Eurozone are entirely in favour of democratic procedure has been left in tatters. The left now has a legitimate reason to criticise the approach of the European Union, no longer just right-wing eurosceptics.

Germany, in this case, must receive intense criticism as they have been most insistent in rejecting Greece’s fair terms and forcing austerity upon them, despite themselves running a successful economy that allows investment and rejects austerity. They claim that austerity will work in Greece despite it having failed dramatically for five years already.

The Troika has just destroyed Greece’s government and everything they stand for in one lethal blow and in turn have significantly damaged their democracy. The Greek parliament must now vote to reject the terms that Tsipras and the Troika agreed to. They are undemocratic, economically flawed and damaging to the Greek people. Syriza must remember why it was elected and stand by their principles of anti-austerity. If they don’t, they will be plunging their nation into three more years of hardship and will have awarded the Troika a momentous victory – a victory that will confirm what the Troika appear to already know: that there is no one that can successfully defeat them.

Ryan Curran