Vertigo

You hear from very powerful people the most flattering words about your country. From CEOs of big multinationals, foreign politicians and presidents of important universities. They believe in Greece’s potential and see it as an island of stability and serious, modern political leadership in a world of instability and chaos. They all predict that the country will take off in the coming years. You feel proud but also relieved because Greek society suffered a lot to get to this point. You say to yourself, “We’ve put the worst behind us, it seems we’ve learned from the past.”

And while you are thinking about all this, you get vertigo. You look down and what do you see? The reflection of the same country you were proud of a minute ago. Except it’s darker, murkier and scarier. Its course seems to depend on systems and dealings which are far beyond the understanding of ordinary men and women. You finally wonder which is true: Can we become the Denmark of the South or will we become the Colombia (of the past) of the Balkans? 

It doesn’t surprise you how dramatic the dilemma is. Greece is constantly swinging between civil wars, divisions, disasters and triumphs. But it makes you angry because, with so much we’ve been through, we shouldn’t be risking moving backward. It makes you angry because the most European and exportable prime minister of recent years had absolutely no reason to tolerate – to the extent that he knew about it – the operation of a center that crossed the red lines of our fragile democracy. Now, an endless vicious cycle of revelations or “revelations” may be opened which will eventually lead us into a permanent political crisis and inability to govern. All while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan watches on with a sardonic smile, and the country rolls backward.

Behind all of this there is, of course, the big tangle, the main Gordian knot that none of the previous prime ministers – Costas Simitis, Kostas Karamanlis, George Papandreou, Alexis Tsipras – managed to unravel: It is about how this country can be governed. It is something that requires the coordination of political forces and the robust functioning of the country’s institutions. After all, the state is strong when it is based on transparency and rules, and it cancels out all those people who offer shady services, with obvious results.

I once read that the feeling of vertigo is a battle between fear and the desire to fall. The challenge now is how not to fall, because it’s a long way down.