By Nikos Konstandaras

Tomorrow it will be one month since PASOK’s election victory. Since October 4, though, time seems to have been playing strange tricks on us: One moment it feels as if only an hour has passed, and then it is as if we have entered a new era where everything is changed. George Papandreou’s PASOK is very different from previous New Democracy and Socialist governments. New players are everywhere, making wild proposals and – on the surface at least – public administration has been introduced to the digital age. The premier himself is impressively kinetic. But sometimes all the rushing about seems to kick up a dust cloud behind which there is strange inertia.

A month has passed and the ministries and special departments are still without general secretaries, because the good idea of calling on candidates to submit their CVs online clashed with the reality that it takes a long time to evaluate 20,000 candidates for 88 posts that will determine the government’s success or failure. Four weeks on and we still don’t know if the Chinese company Cosco will be able to run Piraeus port, because PASOK seems unable to reconcile its easy pre-election promises with the tough decisions that government demands. In two crucial spheres – the economy and public safety – the debts and violence that the government inherited seem to have been placed on the shoulders of just two ministers while the rest act nonchalantly. It may be too early – and perhaps unjust – but there is a sense that the prime minister is still focused on his pre-election promises rather than on the tough compromises of government.

Without doubt, we can see the good intentions to solve problems that have plagued the country for decades. But these are undermined by the naive idea that time will wait for the magical solutions.

The world, though, won’t stop turning; time waits for no one; the train won’t slow down because we dream of a perfect future.