Μake us preferred on Google The whole world is voting in a cascade of elections. Yesterday, it was Brazil and Israel. The day after tomorrow, it will be the US. And after that, most of Europe’s democracies.
In six or seven months (at the latest), Greece too will go to the polls. In an election that has elicited all manner of predictions, but just as many question marks.
I can’t speak for the other countries, because every one is different. But Greece has set off down the road to its electoral clash with an unprecedented heedlessness.
It is not discussing the key problems that ought to concern it, which clearly aren’t “To Horiatiko”, Pizza Fan, and Liolios’s basketball match-fixing.
Nor is it a coincidence that we only remembered health recently and superficially, purely because of the death of Mazonakis. While education we hardly remember at all.
Greece is a country that does not take real threats seriously—though it certainly doesn’t skimp on words and bluster when it comes to non-existent ones…
A country that does not even put on the table the most obvious question that will concern it post-election: who will govern, when no one wants even to discuss the issues we face?
Everyone remains entrenched in certainties which (and I understand this) are hard to debate in the run-up to a general election.
But I wonder how reassured the citizens feel at the prospect of New Democracy winning the absolute majority it seeks. Which can only be challenged by “us or no one,” as Tsipras says. Unless PASOK’s promised “political change” ever arrives. The rest barely make a sound.
Frankly, I don’t know if this is considered a plan in one or other of its versions. And above all, I cannot say whether, in one way or another, it addresses the needs of the nation and its people.
Gallons of saliva were expended on Ms. Kövesi, the head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, who quietly completed her term yesterday and set sail for horizons new.
Meaning, it’s striking how even issues that galvanized the Greek public for months on end—like the Tempi rail crash or the OPEKEPE agricultural funds scandal—are not even on the agenda for pre-election debate.
If it could be called a debate. I agree that Greece has long since exited the danger zone of existential threats.
But that does not mean it has no problems, or that it doesn’t need to consider them in order to tackle them.
It’s probably that heedlessness we were talking about that’s to blame. Which has become something of a national sport.
And simply makes it easier for every passing talking head on TV to talk about absolutely everything except what matters.
