Adrift between hope and disappointment
The country has so many chronic problems, the international environment is so unsettled, and people have such a need for stability, that each government’s worst enemy is itself. Over many years, polls show support for governments and trust in prime ministers surpassing the percentage that they won in elections. Because, irrespective of what they vote, most citizens want their governments to succeed.
When those in power appear to handle crises methodically and with sincerity, people’s inbred (and justified) lack of faith in institutions and state mechanisms eases a bit. This benefits governments, even as every opposition party tries to portray them as callous, dangerous and in the pocket of foreign agents. In this polarization, each government believes that any success is due to its efforts alone. And so, its self-confidence grows, to the point of arrogance, whereas the opposition intensifies its efforts to turn every shadow of doubt into a black hole of evil and ineptitude.
This notorious “toxicity” (which all condemn and, at the same time, embrace) is a permanent fixture in our politics and usually does not count very much. Until the moment when our public life’s immune system is weakened by a government’s mistake or inactivity. Then, even the opposition’s hyperbole and lies assume the mantle of prescience and justification. As their poll numbers slide, governments make more mistakes, until this culminates in elections.
Each new government is strengthened by its predecessor’s failure and the citizens’ desire for stability and solutions to problems which, in the political ferment, have only got worse. And so we drift continually between the hope that “this government will be better” and the fear of another disappointment.
Today’s government, which has repeatedly proven to be better than its predecessor, now has to convince everyone that its handling of the issue surrounding the surveillance of PASOK party leader Nikos Androulakis, reporter Thanasis Koukakis, and others, is sincere and effective. It must show that all that happened was justified or, if not, was an aberration, not the outcome of a culture of impunity and improvisation. This places a heavy burden of responsibility on the government to protect its own credibility and to safeguard institutions. And it has to bolster the country’s image at a particularly difficult point in world affairs.
