OPINION

A cycle of stupidity

How serious and organized a state is is determined by the way in which it manages the most basic affairs, from waste treatment to the burial of the dead.

Thanks to the incompetence of our political officials and our dysfunctional state apparatus, this country has been unable to solve these issues and for decades they have stayed in a limbo of red tape and political wranglings.

Recent developments in southern Athens — where the Municipality of Glyfada and local church leaders appear to have worked together to take over a plot of land on Mount Hymettus so they could turn it into a cemetery — are a reflection of the absurdity that prevails on a local and national level: The state has failed to settle a substantial problem and, as a result, forced the mayor to break the law.

When the state cannot provide an organized solution, it is pushing everybody from mayors and citizens to society at large to act in a way that goes against all that is rational, expected and, in so many cases, legal.

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