Time for a reality check
Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis completed his three-day trip to China escorted by some of his government’s most senior ministers as well as businessmen. During the course of his visit, the Greek premier signed a number of agreements, discussed the access of local ports by Chinese ships as their gateway to Europe, the export of Greek olive oil and ways to attract Chinese tourists to Greece. Karamanlis’s visit to Asia gave him an opportunity to escape the daily routine here, and everyone hopes his efforts will deliver something other than the disappointment and futility that have befallen similar pledges announced in foreign capitals in the past. In any case, Karamanlis fulfilled his goal. Hopefully, some of the businessmen who joined him will also discover – unlikely though it may seem – that China is a country that is good for business based on mutual interest. But the trip is over, and any impressions from this exotic country will soon fade away. The ruling party will be faced with a reality check. The government must realize two uncomfortable facts: First, Greece is facing a troubling mixture of economic distress, dysfunctional institutions and perennial deadlocks. The government’s economy planners have repeatedly announced measures in a bid to boost growth, hoping to make the country more appealing to local and foreign investors. But prospects are looking dim. Similar to the average Greek citizen who craves a safe and steady position in the public sector, most of Greece’s entrepreneurs also choose to cling close to the state. They are calling for regulations that would make Greece’s labor market no less attractive than India or China – quite an impossible and, yes, undesirable task. If a small minority of creative entrepreneurs still manage to flourish inside the country’s unfriendly economic environment it is because they look beyond the confined domestic market, which is after all monopolized by the banking sector. Secondly, Karamanlis must deal with the television media. Television channels are now setting the daily agenda, all in the name of meting out justice and purging corruption from political life. The electronic media began by meddling with the Church of Greece. Their interference was tolerated by the State and those political parties who wished to exercise ideological hegemony over people by causing them to mistrust, if not envy, all other influential institutions. Certain private channels recently took issue with alleged corrupt judges. Government members followed suit. As a result, the political system is in disarray. The sole concern of politicians, clerics, judges, lawyers is whether or when they will come under television scrutiny. To be sure, the media are not to blame for corruption – even if the recent wave of revelations is dwarfed by the wrongdoing of the second Simitis administration, which saw the squandering and redistribution of Greek taxpayers’ savings. Nor can one expect the media to show self-restraint or what is commonly referred to as a sense of responsibility. These are characteristics of a bygone era. However, we must realize that the power of the media derives from the weakness of the existing political system, which seems to have entered a process of irreversible decline.
