Reshuffle move prompted by polls

Just seven months after a triumphant reelection, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proceeded last Wednesday with “corrective moves,” alarmed by opinion polls showing that public safety is citizens’ second biggest concern after rising prices.

While the government has made moves to address the rising cost of living, which, to some extent, was acknowledged by public opinion, concern began to grow that the issue of security, which has long been championed by ruling New Democracy, could be its undoing.

“Then the die was practically cast” that the prime minister would make changes in the relevant ministry, a government source told Kathimerini, noting that Mitsotakis decided there should be no further delay. 

Sources stressed that the prime minister did not believe the Citizen Protection Ministry was wholly to blame. However, successive operational errors inevitably put the blame squarely on the political leadership.

The first, and most important, demonstration of these operational errors was the unimpeded descent of dozens of Croatian hooligans on the Greek capital in August for the European soccer qualifier between AEK Athens and Dinamo Zagreb, which ultimately led to the death of Michalis Katsouris during fan clashes.

Government sources said that if the minister at the time, Giannis Oikonomou, had not been new to the post “he would have been gone then and there.” But the hooligan clashes were not the only glitch, as the Citizen Protection Ministry seemed disorganized on a number of issues.

The problems culminated with the deaths of two police officers – one after being hit by a naval flare fired by a hooligan during a volleyball match in Rentis, near Piraeus, and another during a car chase in Schisto, also near Piraeus. Both incidents caused outrage, and within the police force itself.

Inevitably the leadership of the Ministry of Citizen Protection was losing the battle with public opinion, which considered security an unsolvable problem. It was also losing the trust of the police force which, on the occasion of the death of officer Giorgos Liggeridis from the flare, put out the message that it felt vulnerable.

“Never has a New Democracy government lost the trust of uniformed officers,” a top government official noted.