We are shocked by the dialogues included in the case file of the OPEKEPE agricultural subsidy scandal because they exude clientelism, corruption and endless cynicism. In reality, however, they reflect the desperate effort of lawmakers and party supporters to keep alive their relationship with their voters.
Once upon a time, an MP, especially a regional representative, had plenty of favors to “sell” to the client-voter. He could appoint him to the public sector, even to the police or the fire department. He could even resolve a pending case with the taxman or help him get a pension, sometimes even if he wasn’t entitled to it. He would call the formerly state-owned National Bank and get his constituent a loan or the formerly state-owned telecom company OTE to secure him a landline without waiting for years. Some of the above could be done directly by the constituent with a bribe, but the mediation of the MP was the first preference.
With these and other things, Greece went bankrupt and the customer-voters felt justifiably betrayed when the successive bailouts came. The Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP), which introduced the merit-based recruitment in the public sector, had already cured the curse of unjustified appointments. Independent tax authority AADE greatly narrowed the margins of political “intervention,” OTE, the National Bank, and Olympic Airways are no longer state-owned enterprises.
What tool is left today for a member of Parliament to entice a constituent? A call, so that “a young man” completes his military service at an advantageous post. An intervention to ensure a subsidy is paid, and everything that has to do with the broader public sector and the new big, gray, opaque sector of “consulting services.” A member of Parliament can still promise to secure better care to a sick person in the public health system, although there the margins are narrowing, and the doctors who work hard every day in adverse conditions literally hate these kind of phone calls.
Until recently, a politician could help someone who had no qualifications get a job in the wider public sector; maybe help appoint him stationmaster at the railway network operator OSE, for example. You see, clientelism sometimes “kills” or dissolves the state, and helps explain major national disasters.
Regional representatives do not have the advantage of appearing often on television, and consider themselves trapped in their clientelistic relationships with the voters. Their voters, in turn, increasingly feel that the menu of favors and arrangements has been reduced, so they logically choose anti-systemic politicians and abandon the traditional parties of power.
The responsibility of those who govern today is great, because they did not uproot this political culture and were unable to renew the political personnel, or the party. They also surrendered to all sorts of go-betweens and unionists, and in practice betrayed all those proper farmers who wanted to be freed from them.
But for Greece to change, we need to get to the point where the MP has to do other work. But also we need to introduce rules of transparency for everyone, because as long as there is “backroom dealing” we will hear that poisonous but justified: “Don’t you see what’s going on around you? Your sole problem is the hundred thousand euros I got for sheep I didn’t have?”