Sense of duty and a ‘whip’
The Greek state is sick and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. But since we can’t push a button and call a timeout we have to fix what we can as fast as we can. Otherwise, the ferries will continue to sail with the boarding ramp down, ministries and services will get tangled in the skein of responsibilities during a big wildfire, military camps will be left defenseless against fires and floods, the stationmaster in Tempe will operate with criminal indifference, the Hellenic Police will fail to catch the traveling murderers-hooligans etc.
The only way to achieve this goal is, unfortunately, the combination of “filotimo” (love of honor) and a “whip” – a Greek version of the carrot and the stick. And before some toxic troll can twist what I mean or claim that I’m proposing some authoritarian solution, let me explain myself. Do you remember how Greece worked in 2004, during the Olympics? All parts of the state were in overdrive and worked with professionalism. I still remember seeing helicopters and coast guard vessels in a large exercise off the coast of Lavrio and wondering what was going on, and being told, “Of course we do exercises all the time, because we are under pressure to show that we can handle all scenarios.” But it wasn’t just the pressure, the feeling that someone had the proverbial gun to our head and was pushing us to work more systematically and professionally. No, it was also the famous Greek filotimo. This unique phenomenon where Greeks abandon their beloved cynical inactivity and shout, “Hell yeah, I can do it much better than everyone else.”
The whip does not work without the filotimo: On the contrary, it can backfire. One great such example is Greece’s bailouts, which were half-implemented or remained on paper.
I confess that I do not know who can mobilize civil servants, police officers, teachers and others to believe and let us all believe that, “yes, we can change the country.” What I do know is that nothing will change, no reform will take place if it is not owned by civil servants and all those involved in the administration of the state. And at the same time, nothing will change if laws and rules are not applied strictly, without loopholes and exemptions for anyone.
Going back again to 2004, I remember something else. How “European” we all became when entering the metro and the – also new at the time – airport. Why? But because we were proud of what we saw, but also because we knew that we couldn’t get away with smoking or acting like thugs.
