An undemocratic pattern seems to be emerging across Europe. When the public of a particular country becomes entrenched against austerity measures, which appear to have been primarily implemented by the ECB, a combination of politicians and civil servants in that nation do whatever they can to bypass the public's wishes. There is absolutely no divergence from a thoroughly pre-planned route.

Here in Ireland, we had Fianna Fail politicians refusing to hold any form of a referendum on a bailout - the most important economic milestone in this nation's history - before they left power. The public played no part in the decision making process, and while we all knew that Fianna Fail were deadwood politicians, they were quite happy to add an extra layer of personal vitriol towards themselves by not consulting the public, instead, they just followed the directions of whatever puppetmasters were controlling their every move. Nowadays we know that they were the unelected heads of the ECB and IMF. Subsequent to the General Election, Fine Gael and Labour have just followed that same pre-planned route, and there has been zero renegotiations, as was promised by all parties during the election campaign.

In Italy, Burlesconi has done exactly the same. A man best known for self-preservation, self-adulation and general selfishness when it comes to his peoples economic plight, and to the notion of democracy within his country, would only leave office after he implemented ECB/IMF-directed Italian austerity measures. He finally knew his days were numbered to single digits, and the only thing he cared about was implementing ECB/IMF measures.

So basically, in both Ireland and Italy, deeply unpopular and unsuccessful politicians who were about to be removed from power, decided that the most important thing for them to do - as a parting shot - was to implement austerity measures, which were drawn up by the ECB and IMF, against the public's wishes. But, in Greece it was different.

When Greece's leader George Papandreou decided - for whatever reasons - that he should let the entire nation decide collectively about the austerity measures, which were already deeply unpopular, and which created an added vacuum of poverty for many families, within days he was ousted from power. He stood up for the right of the people to decide on issues which affect the entire population, and democracy was cancelled.

Fianna Fail and Burlesconi would both argue that, having been voted into power to make such decisions, it was their democratic job to do everything that they needed to do during their time in power. The rest of us would argue that they compacted the biggest decisions of their time in power into a matter of days, and essentially rushed through measures which would affect the lives of their populations intolerably. These kinds of decisions need a period of contemplation, and then a collective decision by the entire public.

Greece was just about to get this chance, but now not only will that choice not be given to the people, they may have also been punished for speaking up. The new Greek PM is Lucas Papademos, a non-elected official who was chosen by Greece's politicians in secret behind-closed-doors negotiations. He is a former European Central Bank policymaker, who was the ECB vice-president from 2002 to 2010. Previously he was the Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 to 2002, and he also holds posts as a professor at Harvard and Senior Fellow at the University of Frankfurt.

Whatever pain Greece felt before, judging by this man's CV and his loyalties, this next 3 months will set the foundations for a much greater level of pain for the Greek public. I suppose you could liken this to the most recent invasion of Iraq by the US. One of the main reasons behind that US invasion was to send out a signal to the rest of the Middle East, now the ECB and IMF appear to be sending out a signal to the rest of the PIIGS nations, and to any others who find themselves in such a debt-ridden situation. Greece is surely in a much worse situation now than it was just a couple of weeks ago, no matter how bad that was.