Hymettus hegemony
The three-day Clean Monday holiday weekend was marked by three attempts to enter the Guinness Book of World Records. A group of young men built the largest kite which crashed to the ground shortly after take-off. A baker kneaded 80 kilos of dough to make the biggest traditional lagana loaf. However, this second achievement will also most likely remain in oblivion, for lagana is unknown abroad and there’s no comparative data to recognize the world record. But the third attempt was a complete success. It combined all the necessary ingredients, being original, bizarre, colorful, and unprecedented. The mayors of Vyronas, Kaisariani, and Ilioupolis declared Thomas Miller, the US ambassador to Greece, persona non grata in their municipalities. The occasion was Miller’s invitation from the Athens College and the municipality of Ilioupolis to participate in a tree-planting drive on one hectare of land at the Monastery of St John Kareas. The first reactions came from Vyronas Mayor Nikos Rogakos and Kaisariani Mayor Giorgos Katimertzis. «Planting trees at the same time that you ‘plant’ people, with the catastrophe you spread across the globe, is not only a grave act of hypocrisy but also one of boundless cynicism.» This is what these two mayors told their counterpart in Ilioupolis, who then realized his undemocratic slip, revoked his invitation and supported a unanimous decision by the municipal council that declared Miller persona non grata in the area of Mt Hymettus. In fact, the so-called Red Mayors of these areas have always performed better on foreign policy issues, rather than the dull and trivial matters that lie within their competency. Little more than 20 years ago, some of these municipalities had declared their areas «nuclear-free» zones, putting up signs warning the superpowers that their districts would keep aloof in the case of nuclear warfare. It makes one wonder, of course, why these tireless municipal officials never thought of declaring their areas garbage-free or drug-free zones, expelling the drug-dealers and those who dump their garbage on the streets. This is probably because they could see the absurdity of such an act. But when dealing with serious and sensitive foreign policy issues – and given their ideological and political blindness – they contend for a Guinness world record in irresponsibility, absurdity and ludicrousness.
