Behind the facade

It’s not a joke but a true story. A “socialist” president of an African country wanted to showcase his avant-garde vision to the people. So, he commissioned a Dutch food company to build a state-of-the-art bread production facility in the nation’s capital, and amid much fanfare, flour went in one end of the factory, and fresh, sliced bread in colorful packaging came out the other.

This technological wonder worked flawlessly for a handful of months, but had shut its doors before the year was out. The contractors had been commissioned to keep the machinery operational for a few months, then hand over the keys to the staff of trained locals. Hence, partly due to government indifference and also to incompetent workers losing their instruction manuals, the maintenance of the machinery ceased, and soon the complex itself followed. The technological marvel had been rendered a shell of its former self.

Would it be a stretch to suggest that this story about 1970s Tanzania, under Julius Nyerere, does not echo known cases of governmental indifference in the post-junta Greek state?

The story of the roof of the Athens Olympic Stadium designed by superstar Spanish architect and structural engineer Santiago Calatrava certainly fits the bill of such an incredible story. Constructed in haste under the pressure of the upcoming 2004 Olympics, at an exorbitant cost, it has since been neglected, as have most of the sports facilities constructed for the Athens Games. As soon as the festivities were up, and despite the cost of billions to erect them, the facilities were left to rot, falling victim to pillaging and vandalism, and were doomed never to be used again – all under the watchful eye of Greek bureaucracy.

Didn’t the exact same thing occur with various national corporations such as the Hellenic Railways Organization? Once the sole proprietor of the country’s railway services, it was exploited by opportunists who used the trains and their wagons to their own benefit. It would be difficult to forget the scandal of whole wagons, loaded with undeclared goods being transported at the expense of the state. After the Tempe tragedy, everyone in Greece learned that the trains were operating without safety measures, due to the fact that nobody thought to protect the relevant electronic safeguard systems – worth several million euros – which were stolen by scrap metal gangs as soon as they were installed, for the sake of melting down the copper for profit.

Need another example? Greece is the only country in Europe that has invested about 200 billion euros in armaments over the course of the last 50 years, and yet has not managed to set up even the rudimentary groundwork of an independent industry to manufacture military materials and equipment. Meanwhile the Turks are producing 80% of their war materiel independently, ranging from trucks and warships to drones and missiles, while Greece cannot even maintain its fleet of C-130 Hercules transport aircraft, leaving the country incapable of conducting airlift operations in times of war or peace.

Last week alone we bore witness to two characteristic examples of Greek state indifference.

The black box of the Tempe intercity train collision, which cost 57 people their lives, was found after nine months, despite the fact that the recovery of its data could have been crucial to discovering the causes of the accident sooner.

Furthermore, a few days ago, having been anchored next to the Thessaloniki promenade since 2019, the legendary 82-year-old destroyer Velos (Arrow), a symbol of the struggle against the Regime of the Colonels, hit the port’s quay, causing a large breach in the stern.

If we are incapable of preserving our irreplaceable national monuments, or conducting a serious investigation into a train collision which cost dozens of lives, how can we hope to be attentive regarding the preservation of the Calatrava roof, properly maintained buses, protect the copper wiring of our railways, or honor any high-quality infrastructure standards in our schools and hospitals?

Not only does the government have to tackle ongoing issues; it also needs to overhaul the dysfunctional Greek state apparatus, where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. The country may have possessed the world’s most advanced inoculation system, it is also slowly but surely becoming ever-digitized; but during the recent floods in Thessaly (as well as the Attica fires of 2021) the water pumping stations were inoperable, simply because nobody had bothered to fuel them up. The ship that is Greece may well have a 21st century facade, but it’s powered by steamship engines.