[Dimitris/Birntachas/Intime News]
Ultimately, the wiretapping scandal did great damage to the government. The damage was not immediate. It was not visible in the polls or in the 2023 elections. This makes sense: The public does not care much about the rules of democracy and, for many, the wiretaps were a matter that concerned only those “at the top” of society: a part of the elite (the Prime Minister’s Office) spied on other members of the elite, party leaders, ministers, generals, businessmen, journalists etc. “Serves them right,” many said, or thought.
However, there was indirect damage that was twofold and significant: First, the government became complacent by the “successful” handling of the wiretapping scandal and wanted to do the same with the 2023 deadly train crash at Tempe. Hence, Dimitris Markopoulos, a lawmaker with the ruling conservatives, chaired both investigative committees in Parliament, acting in both with the same arrogant and anti-institutional manner. “The investigation into Tempe was not the Parliament’s best moment,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis later told TV channel Alpha (January 1). He forgot to say that the parliamentary inquiry into wiretapping scandal was even worse.
Essentially, the Greek government mimicked what Donald Trump had done in the past, when he boasted during a campaign rally in January 2016 that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” For a moment, this seemed to be true. Despite his antics and many institutional deviations, Trump dominated the polls until early 2020. Then came Covid-19 and his promises to make it go away: “You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat;” “It’s going to disappear. One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear;” then came the advice to drink bleach, etc. Ultimately, 1,212,060 Americans died and the public watched live as their bodies were stacked in refrigerated containers.
Something similar happened with Tempe. The successful cover-up of the wiretapping scandal created the illusion (and consequent arrogance) in the government that it could handle an institutional scandal and an accident with 57 deaths in the same way, a tragedy with which the public could identify. Which is exactly what happened with the handling of the pandemic in the US.
The second indirect and major damage suffered by the government from the wiretapping scandal has to do with citizens’ trust. They may not have given a damn about the fact that some people (whom justice was never able to identify) were monitoring the conversations of party leaders, ministers, generals etc, but they saw – or at least sensed – the cover-up methods. They saw a Parliament powerless to examine even the slightest aspect of the tragedy in the competent committee; they heard civil servants of the intelligence service declare that they were above the Constitution and that they would not be accountable to anyone; they found that the Supreme Court quickly archived major aspects of the case without conducting the slightest investigation or calling essential witnesses; they saw the government not implementing decisions of the Council of State; they heard arrogant ministers unleash half-truths and many lies on TV. The cover-up of the wiretapping scandal ballooned and deepened the – existing – creeping distrust in institutions. And then came the deadliest train crash in Greece’s history…
I have written many times that I consider it unlikely that the government would cover up a smuggler or any businessman selling flammable products. But the small cover-ups it engaged in to avoid some of its ministers being accused or charged (of any mistakes), and therefore ruin the myth of the so-called “executive state,” fueled conspiracy theories in a climate that was already distorted due to the wiretaps. Add to this the Trump-style arrogance of the government that essentially believed it could “cover up everything and not lose a single vote,” and the tragic accident took a steep downhill path, which resulted in the deterioration of the institutions as a whole.