High politics?
I am not really sure what «high politics» means. As a result, I cannot categorize the government’s stance during Tuesday’s parliamentary session when the opposition demanded the creation of an investigative committee to look into activity on the Athens Stock Exchange between 1999 and 2000. Let me first express a naive query: Is this activity confidential? If not, why do bourse authorities not supply the information to journalists, politicians or whoever else asks for it? If, on the other hand, these details are confidential, how is this acceptable for a «market» which operates publicly and openly? And does this mean that some authority was responsible for ensuring the secrecy of the share trading done by Michalis Neonakis (the PASOK Executive Bureau official who resigned on Wednesday after a report showed he had traded more than 64 million euros on the bourse)? The government continues to insist that it never got involved in behind-the-scenes trading on the stock exchange, for any particular shares. If this is so, then it has no reason to resist the establishment of an investigative committee, especially because such committees rarely reach any common and indisputable conclusions. On the contrary, after so much fuss and so many accusations, one would expect a government of «high responsibility» to actually request the formation of such a committee so that all allegations can be investigated and the commotion can subside.
