“Why you and
not me”
Due
to the latest international developments that have placed Greece in the middle
of the global crisis, Greek deputies and politicians come to redefine
themselves as persons if need be.
But, what is
“need” actually, in terms of politics and regarding the society? Although
deputies -such as Marilisa Xenogiannakopoulou-make announcements about their removal from political parties
where they used to belong, the problem of personification in politics also
encloses its denial. It is very easy to deny your past when there is guarantee
to rebuild it under the form of new alliances.
However,
this political game of flames billowed
over the prairie has nothing to do with the society itself. Greek citizens -and
any citizen on a global level- need politicians who will vote for the lifting
of antisocial measures. What deputies may decide for their identity is another
chapter of the politics history.
On
the other hand, there is no wonder why especially now, some days before the
voting of the Memorandum measures promoted as ‘‘inexorable’’ by the Greek
government, we observe such political tendencies.
It is just a proof for the political system to convince itself that it is
still a dynamic network. This is incorrect given that this sort of dynamism
should be relevant to the political impact and refer to the functionalism of
the measures within the society.
If
there is a keyword about the latter-day problems, that’s “society”. Greeks
cannot afford the measures just because some decided to vote their duty. This
theatre of the absurd tends to serve more and more a strictly political
construction and its language, of which the former PASOK now appears as PASHOCK
in our memory. And this linkage makes part of the dialectic between the tragic
vision and the ideological vision. Politicians strive for ideology but in
reality, they strive towards defending themselves as ‘‘socially’’ defined
persons.
According
to Alvin Gouldner –i.e. The Dialectic of
ideology and Technology, NY Seabury Press 1976 – persons “are human beings socially defined as having certain
attributes. A person is a human being believed 1) to be a locus of potency or
power, and hence 2) to be morally responsible for his actions”.
Anyway,
in the Greek political scene, we observe a great paradox. The notion of the
moral responsibility regards the opposition members. The so called Lagarde’s
list aroused quarrels among deputies; the lost “stick” and CD of the
ex-minister Papaconstantinou also nourish the chaotic character of political
narratives instead of offering new leads to the case. So, I wonder what kind of
personhood is that…
I
wonder how some Greek politicians call upon the future of the European Union to
make citizens accept the urgency of the unbearable measures when they cannot
fight the tax evaders and when at once, according to book sources of
international law, in 2003 they rejected the formulation of the European
Constitution. For which reasons, since 1975 –and until today-, hasn’t any text
of the European Union been introduced by any government into the Greek
Parliament regarding a strict report on the article 28, paragraph 2?
Of
course; as legal books write, the Constitution should not be possible to be
interpreted in a way that would abolish the rules characterized as “erga
omnes”…States or nations must collaborate on different and distant issues.
Anyway, apart from this collaboration theory, in reality as Gouldner has
claimed, “a society with a pervading sense of the tragic cannot have the same
relationship to politics as one with an ideological vision. The ideological
vision has slipped free from the limits of which tragedy was so acutely aware”.
Thus, both ideological and tragic visions keep up with false consciousness.
Consequently,
there is no social need for Greek deputies to “play” the ideological partners
in a tragic room. Jean-Jacques Rousseau –i.e. Discours sur les sciences et les arts, Athens 2012 Nissos
publications- viewed Athens
as a place of elegance and good taste, the country of orators and philosophers.
From his critical standpoint, “the elegance of architecture was parallel to
that of the language. One could see the marble and the cloth alive in the hands
of skilful craftsmen”.
Until
today, we have kept this marble tradition in the case of Metro. As citizens, we
complied with the rules and we have kept it clean, as long as the authorities
stressed on the importance of keeping the metro clean and worthy of respect.
Therefore, citizens can follow the authorities’ lead, for they are trained to regard
the state as the par excellence
subject of law. This is the reason why –on the other hand-citizens are opposed
to any unfair treatment within the framework of the conflict between the
government and the press about the reporting of the economic crisis.
In
conclusion, the unfair removal of the two Greek journalists from the Greek
state television shows one aspect of the tragic in the Greek politics. The
other one is the personification crisis. We lack in real persons and this does not
happen by chance. It happens because now in Greece, after the huge failure of
the ex Prime Minister, G. Papandreou, the religious character of the power is
definitely over. As a result, new pretenders want to rule, no matter what name
they may have. Clergy story is an old one, let alone when charisma and
“chrisma”-nomination- have killed one another. But Greece does not need politicians
who dwarfed their adversaries to collaborate with them afterwards. As a
Mediterranean, European and Balkan country, Greece needs its society and social
classes to go on. The Greek politics “on board” under the umbrella of the
question “why you and not me?” does not help either the citizens and the
society or even the political future of its strong defenders.
