A kingdom lost over a nail
There is a story I heard years ago; a nail in the shoe of a horse was loose but the person in charge neglected to fix it. One day invaders entered the country, and a soldier was ordered to gallop to the country’s capital and alert the army. The soldier mounted the horse and started galloping but then the nail broke, the horseshoe moved, the horse could not gallop anymore, and the alarm did not reach the capital in time. Thus, goes the story of a kingdom lost over a nail. I thought of this story as I observe developments in Greece after the recent train tragedy.
I am too far away to follow all the developments, but it seems there is plenty of blame to go around. There is a judicial inquiry going on and some individuals will be prosecuted. There will also be political consequences; the minister of transport resigned, and the governing party will be facing the voters in a few months.
Many, both well-known public figures and anonymous citizens, blame the shortcomings of the system which created the conditions for the terrible accident. The same system that created the conditions for the wildfire at Mati with many victims a few years ago, the deadly flood at Mandra before that, and a number of problems which seem to plague Greece forever regardless of which party is in power.
It is the system that hires and promotes individuals unqualified for the job. It is the system that allows such individuals to perform their job without adequate evaluation or supervision (some railroad workers were not trained for the job and others left their post early). It is the system that burdens the public sector with a large number of workers who are moved from position to position (from transporting books for the Ministry of Education to train conductor!). It is the system that does not keep an eye on the condition of the equipment and is not monitoring the various organizations, public or private, tasked with, in this case, rail transport.
The system fails us because we are the system and we do not want to change it because we benefit from it
However, the system is not a machine but people, and in a democracy that includes all of us. When was the last time that a union agreed for its members to be evaluated? When was the last time that people demonstrated in the streets demanding that such evaluations take place? When was the last time that public employees were fired, besides after a tragedy, for not doing their job right or for leaving work early? When was the last time the Greek voters punished a government for hiring too many public employees? When was the last time any of us turned down the opportunity to be appointed in the public sector? When was the last time that a minister was fired for neglecting the unglamorous details of their portfolio? Maybe some readers know such cases, but I don’t.
Maybe Greece has all the problems all of us know – from congested traffic to dangerous roads, and buildings constructed on forestland etc – because that’s what we deserve. The system fails us because we are the system and we do not want to change it because we benefit from it. It is my brother who was hired as train conductor even though he is not qualified; my sister who cuts corners at work but there is no evaluation, so she gets away with subpar performance; my son who is building a house in a forest.
The people of Greece are upset, and rightly so, and are demonstrating asking for justice; this is understandable, but when we will take to the streets demanding good government even though that might mean personal financial loss? I have no idea what the legal or political repercussions will be as a result of the train accident, but I am sure that systemic changes will not happen because we don’t really want them.
John Mazis is professor of history at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
