[Giorgos Kydonas/Intime News]
The pinnacle-on collision of two trains on the nation’s major railway line at Tempe on the evening of February 28, 2023, was inconceivable. It price the lives of 57 individuals, left many extra injured, and plunged their relations and all of Greece into mourning. We had an pressing want to grasp how this might occur, to see these accountable delivered to account. We would have liked to see procedures, mechanisms and a brand new mentality that might by no means enable a repeat of such an accident. However what adopted was simply as unthinkable. As a substitute of all acknowledging the persistent errors which kill, which undermine each nationwide and private effort, our public life, our state companies and our establishments rapidly went again to enterprise as traditional.
The federal government needed to get previous the difficulty as rapidly and painlessly (for itself) as doable, whereas the opposition events’ precedence was to wreck the federal government as a lot as doable with out pushing to get to the core of the issue. Shortly after the crash, the nation’s shock and the conspiracy theories that thrive in such a local weather, shook individuals’s sense of safety. The elections that adopted confirmed their want for stability, as they granted New Democracy a cushty majority in Parliament. However the ache provoked by Tempe didn’t ease, nor was it forgotten. The victims’ relations demanded solutions, as suspicions grew that the federal government was hiding one thing. The federal government, in flip, appeared to take its eye off the ball, maybe due to its snug election win and the dearth of a reputable opposition social gathering. Its manipulation of the parliamentary inquiry and the boastful feedback of some ministers strengthened the impression that the federal government’s precedence was to shut the difficulty as rapidly as doable slightly than to get to the foundation of what occurred and who was accountable.
In all, the federal government appeared unable to disentangle itself from the functioning of establishments, which ought to have had the only real accountability for coping with the difficulty. So, when the proper alternative arose (the federal government’s falling out with a robust businessman), opposition events seized the chance to name for a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The federal government replied with the declare that it’s being attacked by the tangled net of political-business-media pursuits that wield undue affect in Greece. If the 12 months because the Tempe tragedy has proven something, it’s that we’re nonetheless removed from our vacation spot – the nation that we wish to stay in.
