Personal challenges and public policies
It’s been a difficult summer. Citizens feel angry and insecure. They wonder: “If this technocrat prime minister can’t do it, who can?” Kyriakos Mitsotakis insists on “taking it upon himself” and talks about personal challenges. However, you set personal challenges only when you are sure that each part of the state is working correctly and only if everyone below has also set similar challenges, from the minister to the station master of the railway network and the officer of the police or the Fire Service.
As a prime minister you can appoint a minister to a crucial post only if you would entrust him with the management of a business, and hospital administrators should not just be someone’s close friend. You must impose procedures, training and discipline in areas where everything is chaos. You can also instill in ministers, government officials and civil servants the concept of collective challenges that concern everyone. And the notion that everyone equally shares the successes and the failures. Finally, you can prohibit lawmakers, ministers, bishops or other actors from calling to appoint “a friend” to the leadership of the police or any other crucial body. But that’s about it.
The truth is, Greece is a strange country. The profound inadequacy of the state leads to all sorts of absurdities. I have seen prime ministers having to deal with a missing part of the pipe that carried the water to the island of Kastellorizo or calling a civil service department head at night, at his home, to free a struggling investor from the red tape. But we’re not going far like that. Neither micromanagement works effectively, nor the addition of more staff between the prime minister’s office and the bowels of the Greek state.
There are many foreigners, for example, who want to invest or live in Greece. Some meet the prime minister and are excited because they see a modern, technocratic leader. When the time comes to implement their plans, however, they often stumble upon problems and no one can help them. They feel as if they have entered a hotel whose lobby looks like the Hilton, and the room like a backwater motel. The road to change is very long and will require a lot of work. This country does not need a decorator’s touch but a radical renovation that rebuilds from scratch in several areas. And it’s better start now that we have four years until the next election.
