Navigating in the fog
“Neither the state nor the Hellenic Public Properties Company knows exactly how many properties it owns, nor where they are, nor even whether they can be exploited,” Ilias Bellos concluded in his reportage (Kathimerini 21/01/24) on “the myth of 72,000 state properties” and the chaos that surrounds the issue.
The value of this property was once regarded as sufficient guarantee for a bond loan worth 50 billion euros to help finance the public debt. However, according to the report, its value is closer to €1.27 billion. With this, we record yet another collective defeat: the priceless property portfolio turns out to be yet another myth. We see once again that serious people based their calculations on a fog of unverified information and expectations, to make decisions that would have serious consequences on the lives of real people. This underlines the suspicion that the only thing that is certain in our country is that nothing is certain, that we do not know even basic things, that nothing should surprise us. If there is anything surprising in the report, it is that so many years after the national bankruptcy, after the memoranda and the political adventures, so many things remain unclear, like shadows in the mist that covers Greek reality. It would, of course, have been a greater surprise if the news was that some order had been placed on one of the state’s basic elements – its property.
When the bankruptcy befell us, we learned (to our surprise, of course) that no one knew the number of people employed by the state. At that time, people who had been drawing salaries without turning up set foot in their workplaces again. We expected that many things that were wrong with our country would be fixed, albeit belatedly. But because ignorance is not limited to the number of personnel but also to the quality of their work (not only to pensioners’ incomes but also to the contributions that each had made to the public till), this ignorance gave rise to yet another injustice: cuts to wages, pensions and benefits were “horizontal” in nature, affecting everyone equally. The inequality in this “equality” is that the industrious and conscientious were punished whereas the layabouts were just armed with yet another reason to complain while drawing their salaries (even if these were now smaller) without offering anything, without freeing up the position for someone more interested in working.
In this mist, no one knows what is real and stable, all are obliged to survive whichever way they can. It is like a sea full of shadows (of what we think is there, what might be there, without our being certain), and reefs – the real consequences of our actions. Included in the latter are bankruptcy, destruction of the environment, injustice, disappointment, uncertainty, insecurity, the demographic problem and the emigration of the young. This mist allows all to choose what they deem to be real, and so, mismanagement of the public administration, corruption and division flourish. The many shadows increase the threat of the surrounding reefs.
