Ta Nea reported yesterday that the government’s basic electoral platform is the criminalisation of political life with a series of court cases that remain open, in various stages of the judicial process. Among them, sources say, are the loans taken out in years past by political parties.
Before the rooster crowed, the report was confirmed. Political parties’ loans (mainly Pasok and New Democracy) are the next objective of the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government, after the targeting of former prime minister Costas Simitis.
Essentially, what was confirmed is that the government is plying towards elections with an organised plan to bring to the forefront of public life cases that do not proceed in a political timeframe, but rather in a judicial one. The aim is obvious, to perpetuate suspicions about the activity of SYRIZA’s political opponents, and especially those who represent the centre-left, in order to degrade that part of the political spectrum in the eyes of citizens.
The plan would have been legitimate if it were solely political. Yet, it becomes illegitimate when the government uses the judicial process to dominate part of the political spectrum, the centre-left in this case.
The aim is political, but in politics games with state institutions are illegitimate, even when a party wants to be a caliph in the place of the caliph. Andreas Papandreou absorbed Georgios Mavros’ centrist party. Yet, he did it with political valour, and not with dark Rasputins, not as a candidate to become caliph, but as a true democrat.
