Inevitable destiny?
Whoever contributed toward Greece’s gaining the right to organize next year’s Olympic Games will reap the rewards they deserve. The rest of us can comfort ourselves with the thought that the whole thing is a disaster and that our country has witnessed far worse calamities over the course of its long history. And the disaster of next year’s Games is our inevitable destiny. So, what hopes should one harbor for this destiny? That it will be a success and that all those who contributed toward it, and exploited it, be rewarded? or that it fails and we are all subjected to ridicule? The question is virtually meaningless as both success and failure are dependent on one’s outlook. The most likely scenario is that all the Olympic works currently in progress will have been completed (with all the poor workmanship and overruns that their hurried construction dictates) and that the 2004 Games will take place according to the standards and tastes of sponsors and other major players. Many are comforting themselves in advance for all the inconvenience they foresee with the thought that at least Athens will have been smartened up with a few projects which otherwise would not have been undertaken. But this is the wrong way of looking at things. If the works had really been necessary, and if we had the cash and technical know-how to make them real, then why did we not have better planning and proper auctioning and assignment procedures, albeit at a slower pace?
