Underneath the correction fluid

We’ve heard all about the mismanagement of the country’s railway system. We’ve heard all about the mess with the automatic operation and signaling systems, about canceled tenders and slipshod stopgap measures, about the waste of funds and the rampant corruption. We’ve had our fill of excuses from the people involved in the tragedy of February 28.

But the incident with the correction fluid is, perhaps, the most telling of all. “At the end of the shift, each stationmaster hands over to the next one and this process is recorded in the relevant log. After the incident, the time of the shift handover was altered, using correction fluid,” the 59-year-old stationmaster of Larissa in northern Greece, who stands accused of causing the collision between the two trains in the Vale of Tempe, told police investigators. 

Inexperienced – still in training, in fact – he was alone on duty at one of the country’s busiest stations on the night of the tragedy, as the shifts of his two senior colleagues had ended and they had left. After the collision, someone, he claims, interfered with the logbook and changed the time that the handover happened.

Was it panic? Was it desperation? Is there some other way to interpret a move that was certain to come to light sooner or later?

The first thing that comes to mind is that given how all these antiquated implements of communication within the Greek rail service – like books, pencils, pens and correction fluid – have been used for decades, the move to change the time may have been automatic. Maybe past chicanery had been “fixed” this very same way on other occasions. And no one checked. But correction fluid cannot be hidden; it leaves a distinct mark. And this time, it not only hid what was underneath, it also revealed something that is crucial, both as an act and as an oversight.

The collision between the two trains at Tempe exposed the faulty systems, the haphazard operations, the bad habits, the oversights (criminal in some cases), the lackadaisical attitude of a state that is chronically indifferent to its duty and to the people it is meant to serve.

The correction fluid in the logbook, as an actual substance and a symbol, came as an additional piece of evidence of these shortcomings and of efforts to cover them up after the fact. It also exposed the dichotomy between the narrative of an digitized and efficient state with a railway system that belongs in the previous century.

No digital injections will save a state that’s ailing as profoundly as Greece’s is. To be fair, every step toward modernization is welcome and important, but this does not undo the fact that the ground beneath each of these steps is not as solid as it ought to be. Because true change and modernization needs to be essential, not a mere illusion.