It is generally accepted that the State has the basic right to inspect, even in the middle of the night, the homes of the people. This certainly extreme act of Authority (which violates the asylum of the family homes) must obviously be exercised as sparingly as possible.
In other times, when Democracy barely survived, groups of people would treat the invasion of homes and offices with fear, as they would often result in the arrests of dissenters.
The need to protect offices, especially those of political parties, resulted in the development of defense mechanisms. The older will remember, for example, that all the furniture in EDA’s offices had labels stating that they belonged to MPs. Due to parliamentary immunity that meant that nobody could touch them.
The years went by and the country left behind these sort of political phenomena. These days we rarely hear about any cases of family home invasions; this, of course, does not include cases of terrorism.
Every government must be held accountable when it is exercising its powers. There can be no excuses like those of Konstantinos Karamanlis, who in foregoing all responsibility for the murder of MP Grigoris Lambrakis cried out “who governs this land?”.
After many years we can all tell the narratives of Democracy from the narratives of authoritarian power.
Stavros P. Psycharis
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
