By Pantelis Boukalas

The pre-election scene has just a few roles and only a small repertoire of works is presented every four years. But there’s always a miracle maker who is undaunted by the skeptics who question his magical skills – including foes in the same camp with the ambition to become “caliph in place of the caliph.”

So on the one hand are those who claim to have transformed the country with their works and, on the other, those who question the whole cosmogony thing, i.e. those who either refuse to acknowledge that any good happened at all or who also claim responsibility for it.

We watch the same play again and again, but our irritation grows. And now we have yet again been promised that families with three children will receive special benefits, that pensions will go up, that the government will introduce a new health card for the insured. But we heard it all before in 2004 and this can mean two things: either that our miracle men have managed to freeze time or that they are sure that due the heat wave our brains have come to a halt.

So however one chooses to look at it, a political system in which two rival parties are used to alternating power every few years, inaugurating the same project five times, is a totally immature political system.

It is totally immature when prime ministers (with or without a helmet) invite the television media to record the inauguration of works to fix the bed of an ordinary stream. Taking care of such small tasks is what they are here to do. But as they dully stumble from one term to the next, even those simple tasks have acquired dramatic significance and that should be a cause for embarrassment, not pride. It is totally immature to think that the people are too lacking in maturity, memory and critical judgment that they are about to be swayed by promises that have been made again and again.