In his greeting speech today at an event held for the 30-year anniversary of the operation of the National Center of Public Administration, PM Alexis Tsipras acknowledged that the nation’s public administration system is a “very ill patient.”
This, of course, is a well known fact to all, and a key reason for a broad variety of the country’s ills as it is well documented in scholarly research that inefficiency and corruption have profound effects on economic and political development.
Corruption reflects a general disease of body politics and can be defined as public exploitation and abuse of public office for private gain.
As a political phenomenon, corruption exists in all societies, but it is usually confined in the activities of certain organizations and individuals. In countries like Greece, however, corruption extends to every aspect of society as one of the masterful strokes of the political elite of the country has been to create a “system of exchange” in which everyone can “benefit” by taking part in it.
In other words, Greek corruption goes much further than the common practice encountered in today’s political systems where the corporate and financial elite of a country uses the power of the purse to get elected officials to pass bills that favor moneyed interests. In Greece, for example, anyone could have avoided up until recently paying due taxes by simply bribing income tax officials. Illegal dwelling? No problem. A simple bribe did the trick with all public administrative services, including getting access to electricity and water from the public utility companies.
As Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras is no longer in a position to deny certain Greek realities as he was accustomed to doing as leader of a small and marginalized leftist organization that could not even dream of the prospect of taking over the reins of power — until the country’s traditional political establishment proved totally incompetent of managing the crisis that has engulfed Greece since late 2009. And, thus, while he is aware of the fact that he will disappoint his own supporters in the public sector, he must admit of the existence of the problem of corruption and inefficiency in the nation’s public administrative service.
Still, old habits never die. Bent on building a new state dominated by Syriza party cadres, friends and family members of government officials, Mr. Tsipras attacked in his speech at the National Center of Public Administration the idea of the “depoliticization” of the public administration. And, mind you, not on intellectual but on political reasoning.
Changing Greece’s political culture is key to getting the country out of the current crisis. But the Syriza-led government has already shown with a barrage of actions drawn from past political practices, that one must wait for a new generation of leaders to embark on the radical task of putting to an end the nation’s pathogenies and creating a new social order based on transparency, extensive democratic participation, and the rule of law.
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