The den of iniquity
It really makes you wonder: How safe must a recently arrested corrupt civil servant feel to continue their dirty tricks even after numerous extortion rings within the state have been smashed and the much-discussed dismissal of the money-grabbing employees from a multitude of different services – the tax office in Halkida, the Construction Directorate of the Municipality of Athens, the Municipal Police, the Service of Modern Monuments, the District Health Inspection Directorate, the Public Real Estate Company? How invulnerable can the self-appointed head of a closed conspiracy ring feel inside their invisible fiefdom? How sure are they that they are not in danger of being caught despite acting alongside irreproachable employees? How sure are they that the victim, as a beneficiary of the fraud, will not file a complaint, but will consent to the the lie, the illegality? Are the codes of silence so unbreakable, the bonds of camaraderie so strong?
Certainly, being a crime boss boosts the ego and blinds one to the risks. Easy money corrupt. It trains the insatiable members of the gang in all the characteristics of corrupt power – cruelty, authoritarianism, callousness, arrogance. An employee at the Single Social Security Entity (EFKA) demanded 4,000 euros from a woman to secure a disability allowance for her mother. The blackmailing of people in need is not common lawlessness – it is an immoral act.
However, the fact that victims report perpetrators, do not succumb to the corruption and the authorities remove wherever they can the guilty is a big step. The civil service is far from being a place of saints with unadulterated hearts and clean hands, but it is gradually moving from bureaucratic anachronism to more transparent transactions, and better results.
This is not easily done. We step on the gas and then we step on the brake. Sometimes the world that violates the rules and institutions surfaces, and sometimes it is the one that puts an end to iniquity. Times are tough. There are trampled values, cynicism, amorality, confusion. We do not share a common set of facts, we do not have a common sense of what is true and what is not. We live in times of dramatic extremes. However, within this general maelstrom, we move forward. Regression is still installed in several places, but we are moving forward.
