The older high school text books on Ancient Greek noted that “each man carries two bag, one in front and one in behind”. This also the case with our politicians, who place their good deeds in the front sack and hide their sins in the second sack.
The political leaderships in our country, at least most of them, have many sins. The passion that overcomes them when they claim power does not allow them to judge people and situations with open eyes and clear minds. That is how we all condemn populism, just like oppressive regimes were denounced in the past. Another example of this is the opposition to the bailout from the majority of the people with vague and incomprehensible slogans…
The major and necessary change in politics would be for the political leaders to no just find faults with those who came before, but to also praise them.
The diatribes against the bailouts could have been glorious hymns, had our orators explained that poor Greece managed to change radically in the past few decades with foreign funds.
The “Eleftherios Venizelos” airport has served more than 50 million passengers this year. The Egnatia Odos motor way changed living conditions in the north of Greece. The Rio-Antirio bridge upgraded western Greece. The new roads turned Kalamata into a suburb of Athens: it used to take five and half hours to drive there, but now it only takes two. The Acropolis Museum turned Athens into a new tourist destination. Telecommunications changed our life etc etc…
None of this would have happened without the funding. If these works were excessive and constructed over budget, that is something for the “bosses” to examine and not the usual cunning contractors.
To cite Shakespeare, they wouldn’t be wolves, if the others didn’t act like sheep.
Stavros P. Psycharis
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
