By T. Economopoulos

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has long been stressing to his ministers, his aides and also to the media that 2005 will be a crucial year — a year that will judge how successful his government has been in tackling major domestic problems.

At the end of last week, Karamanlis stressed to his Inner Cabinet that the new year will be “crucial and decisive,” and it is difficult to disagree with this assessment. Even those sensitive to the fact that most governments stress the significance of each new year will share Karamanlis’s anxiety when they consider the burden left behind by 2004, the consequences of perpetually postponing solutions to enduring problems and the challenges cropping up in various sectors.

As most will agree, the economy is at the crux of the mass of problems weighing us down this year.

It was inevitable that all the creative accounting that had been going on — and the subsequent spinning of myths about a “strong Greece” being an equal player in a club of rich nations — would be exposed sooner or later and that we would find ourselves face to face with the chronic problems of our productive and economic system.

Well, following the “unavoidable” delays necessitated by the general elections and the Olympics, the time has finally come and we have no choice but to come back down to earth and face the reality we have been avoiding for so long...