“Alright, it’s a problem,” they tell you. “But it’s a problem of 1.5%.” That is the level of attention the wiretapping affair receives in the polls. “People,” they also say, “have other problems.” And then comes the challenge: “Find me one voter who will go vote based on the state of the rule of law in Greece.”
In this way, the ballot box is presented almost like an air freshener. You spray it, and the odor of every scandal—and anything else unrelated to our pocket—is masked by the heavy fragrance of the election result. It is also presented like a tin can in the shape of a cube. Along with the ballots, we throw in the waste of the previous period. “The people have spoken, let’s move on, life goes on.”
Of course we will move on; there is no other way. And yes, there are gradations in how problems are evaluated. But it is a leap of logic to say that the control of legality should be preceded by some kind of popularity test. Just as bringing charges is not a matter for popular prosecutors, and assigning responsibility is not a matter for popular courts, so too investigation and accountability are not matters of popular priorities. How else can one put it? Contrary to “I think, therefore I am,” the notion “I don’t care, therefore it does not exist” is not Cartesian.
Even more so, it has nothing to do with any rule-of-law state. And if the comparison with the Watergate scandal has any added significance, it is precisely this: the “system” in America in the 1970s did not function perfectly, but it did function—before and after the presidential elections. And it functioned regardless of whether people on the coasts or in the Midwest went to sleep and woke up worrying about whose phone conversations Richard Nixon was listening to and why. The shadow of the scandal may not have hovered over the ballot box, and Nixon may have achieved one of the largest victories in U.S. history in 1972. As it turned out, however, the president carried his sins with him, and two years later the man elected with 61% of the vote resigned.
Here, in our part of the world, nearly five decades later, the government follows the same tactic with the necessary adjustments. It not only denies any involvement on the part of the instigator-perpetrator, but also avoids any involvement on the part of the trapped victim. “These are just a group of private individuals, we have nothing to do with them. We were being monitored. So what?”
On November 7, 1972, Richard Nixon achieved his sweeping victory after projecting the same denial. He knew nothing about the bugs in the Democratic offices; besides, Americans had more serious problems than wiretaps. On August 5, 1974, a recording of a conversation in the White House was revealed, in which Nixon is heard approving an FBI operation aimed at obstructing the investigation into the Watergate scandal. The denial collapsed, and the recording would go down in history as the “smoking gun tape.” It was the irrefutable proof of guilt that led to his resignation.
From the claim by Tal Dilian that he “works only with governments and law enforcement agencies,” what is missing is precisely this: the “smoking gun.” Until then, the government will deny its involvement as perpetrator and “remain indifferent” as victim. The comparison with Nixon remains suspended—both as a threat and as a kind of implicit blackmail. “Acquit me so that I don’t speak.” Or, even more coercively, “so that you are not heard in some conversation.” Recorded—and sufficiently smoking.
