The PASOK are trying to convince us that they have only recently heard the word “buffet” for the first time and are all and sundry incorrupt, blameless and sinless.

There’s a lot of hypocrisy these days. Multiplied and the halos with which all and sundry adorned their heads. Nobody has heard anything about the crime. Nobody has broken any of the… Ten Commandments! Everyone and everyone incorruptible, blameless and sinless.

First time they heard the word “buffet”, nobody ever asked for a buffet, nobody made a single buffet, nobody benefited from a “high acquaintance” or from laws that wiped out previous transgressions, no one ever passed such laws, no one ever worked in a press office, no one ever got hired bypassing the ASEP, all documentation was always in order – even though it took the passage of Law 3051 of 2002 which abolished the background check.

Also, no one received illegal overtime, no one ever circumvented the law on off-duty civil servants, no one was ever paid double salaries and subsidies, never were allowances granted to non-beneficiaries, never were illegal compensation and illegal subsidies paid, never were false certificates issued, never were hospital administrators with a high school diploma appointed. And of course there was never the slightest tax violation and never any bribery. The “quick-fix” was just a fanciful invention.

In fact, if you ask the (always surprised) PASOK, they will tell you that the reports of the Court of Auditors always found them pure and pure.

Shameless and shameful

In reality (and illustratively) we have the following:

-The Court of Auditors report for 2000 found illegal payments of $2.7 billion, as well as direct awards of supplies and public works, tax infringements, illegal compensation payments, illegal grants, allocation of works and suppliesto avoid the audit of the Court of Auditors and the holding of a public tender, failures to conduct tenders for public works, granting of allowances to non-beneficiaries, incorrect salary calculations, payment of double salaries and allowances, illegal composition of tender committees, unjustified opinions of the committees, participation in tenders of contractors without the necessary supporting documents. The EEA paid 777 million dirhams for the lease of a building in Milan that was never used.

-The Court of Auditors’ report for 2001 found illegal payments of 6.6 billion dirhams., circumvention of the legislation on state procurement, public works, off-site travel of public servants, direct awards, cost allocations, tenders with omissions and ambiguities, failure to meet legal deadlines, assignment of additional work to contractors of the original works.

-The Court of Auditors’ Report for 2002 found overtime in excess of working days, payment of postgraduate allowances before receiving a degree, payment of performance bonuses to employees while on leave, hiring of contract workers to fill positions of employees on leave, who then in turn took similar leave, leaving the service unfilled.

-The Report of the College of Inspectors and Auditors of the Public Administration for 2003 found a number of offences: false prescriptions, issuing false certificates, passive bribery in mortgage offices, breaches of duty, financial crimes by employees of MOTs.

In their own words

The bitter truth for the (newborn) PASOK is that all of this comes from statements by prime ministers and ministers. To quote:

–Dimitris Georgakopoulos, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, 4 March 1998:“No matter how many laws the Ministry of National Economy makes, no matter how many laws we adapt to the modern needs of society, if the controls carried out by the competent body, which is the Ministry of National Economy, the auditors and the control mechanisms are corrupt, no investment programme will work. All the programmes that were approved by the previous law, if they did not pay 10% to the relevant committee, none of them would go ahead. Many entrepreneurs have made complaints… If there are no institutions with which to rid the mechanism of crows, no investment will go ahead. Unfortunately, that is where society and the state have come to and that is why nothing is going forward.”

–Alexos Papadopoulos, on receiving the Ministry of Health, 13 April 2000: “I think I am moving on a minefield and I am fully aware of it. There are small to large interests that are eating away like piranhas at the body of the Public Administration in the country.”

The knife in the bone and kickbacks

–Giorgos Papandreou, “Ethnos of Kyriaki,” 24 September 2000: “I think corruption is a serious issue that we have to deal with. We need at this moment to “put the knife in the bone” and make bold cuts on this issue.”

–Kostas Skandalidis, “Ta Nea”, 16 October 2000:“Corruption is dealt with by a deep cut in the political system. By hitting the complex at its root. By changing the institutional framework that determines the autonomy of politics from the centres of economic power. To change the relationship between the economy and politics through profound changes and breakthroughs at all levels. The first intersection involves redefining the relations between politics, the state and economic power… The second breakthrough is to crack down on kickbacks and corruption in the state and control mechanisms… The third cut concerns political money.”

–Giannis Kapsis, open letter to PASOK secretary Kostas Skandalidis, 18 October 2000: “The situation is more critical today than ever… The corruption that hurts the average citizen is the shamelessly and defiantly established kickbacks. It is the modern capital tax paid by the unprotected average citizen in every transaction with the state and its institutions (pensions – IKA – PPC – OTE – Urban Planning – hospitals etc.).etc.)”

“Fast-track” and gas-guzzlers

–Kostas Simitis, transcript of interview, 8 April 2002: “Bureaucracy still exists to a very large extent… There is also this phenomenon of corruption. There are some people who say that the state is corrupt anymore. It is not so. In many departments, what is called “quick-fix” is required. I see. It is a reprehensible practice and should not exist. As at other levels there is financial crime. There are ways of tax evasion and these must be combated.”

–Gerasimos Arsenis, “Investor”, September 7, 2002: “The perception has prevailed that creative effort is not rewarded, that the gas-guzzlers rule, while corruption reaps both in the public sector and in the market. With an economy that is dominated by corruption and corruption has also raised the cost of production, we cannot have a change of climate.”

The cancer and the “oil”

–Kostas Skandalidis, “Ependidiotis”, 14 December 2002: “Corruption is the cancer of democracy. It has become a slavery… “.

–Theodoros Pangalos, “Apogevmatini tis Kyriaki”, 22 December 2002: “But let’s come back to the issue of corruption. But let us return to the issue of corruption. Corruption has reached such dimensions that it is almost a structural element of the Greek social formation. It is the well-known theory that without “oil” the machine does not move… Corruption touches and concerns the entire Greek society. No institution has remained untouched.”

–Giorgos Lianis, “Ta Nea”, 27 January 2003: “We have tolerated events that were blatant violations of the law.”

Plutocrats and bureaucrats

–Theodoros Pangalos, “Ta Nea”, 17 June 2003: “…Some of our cadres who are completely unprofessional, who have come from the experimental tube of Charilaou Trikoupis, people who were born in popular neighborhoods and villages, who had no entity beyond their inner-party activity, suddenly associate as if the big names of the plutocracy were their natural habitat.”

–G. Papandreou, “Kathimerini”, 12 October 2003: “I believe that the Greek citizen is tired of being bothered by bureaucracy. He is indeed disgusted by the extent of corruption in many areas of public services. He refuses to let the whole society be held back by the petty interests of guilds or larger interests that want to guard political life. I recognise that today many citizens believe that PASOK itself has become part of the establishment and that it is unable to take the necessary initiatives.”

Corruption and interconnection

–Gerasimos Arsenis, Kathimerini, 19 October 2003: “We all know that there is a serious problem of corruption and interconnection. I want to be absolutely clear and unequivocal. If we do not deal with these decadent phenomena immediately and effectively, no measure of modernization and development will succeed.”

–Stelios Papathemelis, Letter to the Speaker of the Parliament, 16 November 2003: “Corruption, which in healthy periods appears only as an exception, has been allowed to develop into a generalized structural phenomenon.”

–Kyriakos Spyriounis, from the floor of the Parliament, 24 November 2003: “If I was deleted because I voted for a pro-transparency law proposal, I consider this deletion a medal in the battle.”

After all this, hypocrisy and halos were indeed left over…