Putting on the brakes
If New Democracy wants to blur the division between government and party, it will be making a grave error and will be strongly, and justifiably, condemned by opposition politicians and citizens alike. However, the charge leveled by certain PASOK cadres that ND is identifying party and government to benefit its own people is something of a joke. Everyone knows that it was PASOK which originally threw the public administration out of gear, thus saddling the country with a major problem. It is a generally acknowledged fact that the governments of the 1980s, led by party founder Andreas Papandreou, intentionally destroyed hierarchies in the public administration system – ostensibly for «democratic» ends – and that they did everything possible to ensure that PASOK could run a «green» public administration. And this unfortunate situation was created during a period when Greece was urgently in need of a new, reformed, European-style public administration. Indeed, instead of creating a first-class public administration system capable of fulfilling the country’s needs and obligations during the 1980s, PASOK succeeded in destroying the existing old-style system, which allowed it to wield major influence on government affairs. Moreover, this development put the brakes on any attempt to achieve economic development in our country…
