The show, sadly, must go on
The father-in-law of a compromised government minister threatens to open Pandora’s box if anyone attacks his son-in-law. The wife of a former minister, trying to justify a breach of the building code in the couple’s new maisonette says, «It’s not as if we opened an offshore company.» Parliamentary deputies pass and abolish laws and use their votes to bargain for future amendments. Every fresh incident in the country’s political tragicomedy is more ridiculous, more miserable than the preceding one. Politicians and their families have moved the moral goalposts of dignity, absurdity, shame, pride, ethics and legality. There is a new understanding of the right of ministers’ wives to do business and get rich. Arguments are presented about lifestyles and the separation of true politics from the substance of morality. The events we have been witnessing over the past few days are images from a cheap theatrical revue with vulgar jokes, spontaneous one-liners, anything that will make the public chuckle. They are scenes from a comic farce with no script, with walk-on actors who improvise – all at our expense. As soon as the surprise factor of the joke fades, what remains is disheartening reality where there is no dignity, no shame. No one is ashamed of anything, no one feels compromised. Add to that the greed and sheer impudence, and behavior more typical of thugs and petty gangsters. At first they invoke the flexibility of the law, then the right of the little man to bend the laws. They threaten that if they are punished, others will go down with them. As the plebeians in the audience boo half-heartedly, they leave the stage, they resign. The lights are dimmed, the plastic chairs collected, cartoonists produce acerbic obituaries. But the lights will soon come on again, the show – «Greece, the political tragicomedy» – must go on.
