A bit of a Trumpish Greek argument

According to the Greek government, its performance on the rule of law and freedom of the press has been judged at the ballot box. This argument is a little “Trumpish.”

This is exactly what the former US president’s supporters are invoking: that power guarantees immunity. Anyone who challenges this principle by citing institutional checks and balances and other constitutional platitudes is dismissed as an enemy of the country, a foreign agent, an inhibitor of foreign investment, an outdated social justice warrior, an obsessive adherent of woke culture etc.

This logic is not new.

Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski used to say the same thing, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban still regurgitates it. Fortunately, at the European level, there is a different understanding of the problem: The electoral process does not give absolution to the government for its sins.

Thus, on February 7, despite the efforts of the European People’s Party, of which New Democracy is a member, the European Parliament voted by a large majority (330 votes in favor to 254 against) in favor of the critical resolution about the “worrying” decline of the rule of law in Greece, which includes, among other things, the wiretapping scandal, the Tempe train crash, the vindictive strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) and the attempts to control the independent authorities, especially when their work irritated the government – as in the case of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) and the Data Protection Authority – but also the Pylos shipwreck, in which more than 600 migrants and refugees died without any significant progress in the investigation of the case.

The government has two options.

Either to pretend that the resolution is no big deal by discrediting its value, questioning the intentions of those who voted for it, and presenting growth rates and other more favorable data, or to take it seriously, considering that it would be better, especially in view of the upcoming European Parliament elections, not to be in the same category as Hungary, a country synonymous with European isolation.

In a recent interview, Maria Karystianou, mother of 20-year-old Marthi Psaropoulou, who died in the Tempe train crash last year, and president of the association of the victims’ families, wondered: “The majority MPs replace the judiciary and in the end is there no conviction for whoever wins the elections with the alibi of 41% [the support the government got in the national elections]?”

The rhetorical question of a mother mourning her child is more moving than the report of the European Parliament, but it is equally meaningful, and the answer is clearly “No.”