When the body speaks
For people who read body language, the slight yet noticeable crack in the smooth television persona of Kyriakos Mitsotakis was enough to tell them that the New Democracy MP is a lot more flustered than he let on in his explanatory (or apologetic) speech. Those who happened to hear his speech more than once will certainly have noticed that his tone remained unwavering throughout, as though he were reading from a well-prepared script. Furthermore, they will also have noticed that his main argument was the following, rather cynical, one: «I can assure you that if someone wants to do a politician a favor, there are many ways and one of them is surely not issuing invoices in their name.» Mitsotakis has the tone of an expert here, of an «eyewitness» to events in which certain invisible parties (companies, businesses or all manner of «sponsors») «facilitate» the needs of politicians. Mere mortals, not born with silver spoons in their mouths and incapable of making any kind of financial arrangement with a company of the kind Mitsotakis managed with Siemens, can read anything into the term «favor» and let their minds travel down all sorts of suspicious paths. Of course, we should not reject the likelihood that everything about this story is perfectly above board and that it is possible that the company was eager to support a politician with a vision. Christian charity, however, has been on the wane of late and the most likely scenario in this case is that this «favor» would have to have been reciprocated in one way or another at some time. So, when Mitsotakis tries to so hard to convince us that «there are many ways» to do someone a favor, he had better be forthcoming about a few them, while also revealing all the parties involved in the favor.
