Promoting a system of sloth
Alexis Tsipras may just be expressing the leftist opposition party’s position on an issue that he handled, when prime minister, in precisely the same way he is proposing now, but the promise of abolishing the minimum pass grade for admission to a public university is more than a pre-election stunt. Beyond seeking to woo young voters and their families, the message it sends is that SYRIZA insists on expressing a culture of minimum effort and maximum demands, demands based on various “rights” granted hither and thither and vocal opposition to anything that appears to stand in their way.
This is a mentality that contributes to the kind of willful blindness that made Greece go bankrupt, that made it so hard to extract ourselves from the austerity programs, that necessitated bringing in foreigners to referee the national soccer championship because we don’t trust each other.
SYRIZA and others are trying to maintain an ecosystem that emerged through the extreme populism of PASOK in the 1980s. Apart from introducing crucial and long-overdue social changes, it also established the systematic undermining of already beleaguered institutions and made lacking personal discipline the credentials needed to prove revolutionary constancy.
Ironically, Tsipras’ nod to those who want to believe that they can get what they want without effort can only succeed when the situation is better than it was before
Those who get into politics by making easy promises easily get elected; those who strive for modernization can only win an election the hard way. In both cases, managing power is a difficult task because of the nature of the accumulated problems, because of the way every opposition party so effortlessly undermines government achievements and because of the government’s fear of the next elections. That the country shows signs of progress every once in a while is more the result of having reached an impasse than a desire by the powers that be to prevent that impasse.
Ironically, Tsipras’ nod to those who want to believe that they can get what they want without effort can only succeed when the situation is better than it was before. It is easier to make promises when you’ve crawled out of the quagmire than when you’re in imminent danger of sinking into it. This is why it is such a shame that, in 2023, a party that has already found itself in government should fail to invest in the serious people among its ranks – people in the shadow of other more prominent party officials – and to put forward a serious proposal of what it plans if elected. Instead, it is trying to maintain a mentality that is keeping Greece back.
SYRIZA is thus not only harming the country, but itself too. Because no matter how much politicians invest in charming voters and no matter how much this may help them at the ballot box, society knows that advancement requires hard work, dedication and goals. It cannot be gift-wrapped. So no matter what politicians say, teenagers and their parents will worry about getting good grades in the national university entrance exams. This is why they make so many sacrifices so they can secure postgraduate studies abroad. Because they know that lumping everyone together only benefits incompetent and craven political officials and their clientele, while raising the risk of Greeks being left behind in the race for survival, at the individual and national level. No matter how much we may like being flattered by politicians, we know that words cost nothing and that success comes not through desire alone, or by knowing the right people, but mainly through diligence.
This is why we see so many Greeks, from all sorts of social backgrounds, excelling abroad: because they are among the best, striving for advancement in a clear competitive framework, away from the destructive Greek ecosystem of sloth and navel-gazing.
