Time is ticking away
The worst flood in Greece’s modern history, which transformed the Thessaly Plain into a lake within just a few hours, consuming people, animals, homes and livelihoods, has cast a dark shadow over society. What’s more, it comes just after the massive ecological disaster at Evros, where the biggest wildfire in Europe this year razed the protected forest of Dadia.
People feel disappointed and angry over the delays and failures of the state machine, but also by the absence of coordination on the part of the government. These are failings that bring to mind so many more from the past few years, from the terrible tragedy at Mati with the 2018 wildfires and in Mandra with the deadly floods the year before that, to the appalling train crash at Tempe earlier this year, which cost the lives of 57 people, mainly university students.
All can be described as accidents, but they make it hard for the average citizen to breathe – because he or she feels that people in Greece are only alive by pure chance.
The state performed particularly poorly this summer. We had the incompetence of the police to stop dozens of Croatian hooligans from reaching Athens by road and getting into a brawl with fans of local soccer club AEK that cost the life of 29-year-old Michalis Katsouris. We saw the coast guard being absent from the country’s biggest port when 36-year-old Antonis Karyotis was pushed off the loading ramp of a ferryboat to his death in the raging water. We also witnessed the armed forces failing to prevent a massive explosion at an ammunitions depot in Nea Anchialos, caused by a wildfire in central Greece.
Is the government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis responsible for all these incidents? Of course not. But these incidents do point to a state machine that is quagmired in the past, that is tired and ineffective, and on the point of collapse.
The people of Greece re-elected Mitsotakis to a second term with a 41% landslide because they want him to sort this mess out. They voted for him because they expect him to have the courage to shake the system up and to modernize the creaking state machine, to tackle lazy attitudes and vested interests, to pull the state out of its inertia. They expect him to do the things that will allow this country to make progress and narrow the gap separating it from its European peers.
A lot of what the people expect is still just a promise – even though this is the fifth year that this government has been in power; even though it has practically been handed a blank check and faces almost no opposition. It is its only real rival and the time that is ticking away is invaluable.
