A funfair state
A businessman goes ahead and sets up an amusement park in Halkidiki, northern Greece, with all sorts of rides and games, and, without procuring a single license from the municipal authority or the state, puts it into operation. Employees of the municipal authority, police officers and other local officials see people – mostly families with children and youngsters – flocking to the attraction and paying an entrance fee for a few hours of amusement on the rides offered by the funpark. Yet no one feels compelled to ask the businessman whether he has the papers certifying that it is operating legally and according to all the proper safety procedures. And then a seat on a spinning ride becomes unstuck from its base, killing a 19-year-old boy.
This incident embodies, in a nutshell, the biggest challenge that the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis faces today: that after being elected twice on the promise that he would lay new, healthier foundations for the operation of the state, that he would introduce strict rules for how the state apparatus works and fix the ills of decades, we find that, five years later, little has changed.
The Halkidiki amusement park is not the only proof of this failure, however. Proof lies in the tragedy at Tempe, where an irresponsible and incompetent stationmaster accidentally caused the death of 57 people, without his colleagues or the railway system’s safety procedures being able to rectify his mistakes in time to prevent the deadly collision between two trains running toward each other on the same track. Proof lies the recent near-tragedy, when a car found itself about to plunge into the churning sea between the boarding ramp of a ferryboat and the dock as the ship’s crew insisted on carrying on with boarding despite the gale-force winds. Proof lies in the state’s indifference to the fact that tourists who have absolutely no experience of sailing are allowed to rent small speedboats of 25 or 30 horsepower and go out on unmonitored excursions. Or that quad bikes, which are notoriously dangerous when driven in the wrong conditions, are being rented out at popular tourist destinations even though they are responsible for several deaths a year – most recently that of a 22-year-old on the island of Andros. Proof is in the hostile driving conditions on Athens’ streets, with the police taking no action to stop making citizens feel lucky every time they get to their destination in one piece.
It takes rules, constant oversight, implementation of the law and a sense of responsibility to make the state work properly. It’s time for the government to wake up.
