Greece: The government and the Para-State. An analysis by Stelios Kouloglou

[Translation from the Greek text on Tvxs.gr]

5 Jan, 2009

The 21-year-old policeman who was wounded in the murderous attack that took place in the early morning hours in Exarchia remains in stable condition. According to the police, the two weapons used in the attack had also been used in the attacks against the MAT (riot police) bus and in an earlier shooting against a police station. Nevertheless, the murderous attack against the riot policeman was as expected as the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos one month earlier. View analysis of events. Read about what needs to be done.

Analysis by Stelios Kouloglou.

The murderous attack against a riot policeman was as expected as the murder of Alexis Grigoropoulos one month before. The latter was due to the lawlessness with which the charlatan behavior of [former Minister for Public Order Vyron] Polydoras had armed the police, as well as the organizational disintegration of the Force that was analogous to the full disintegration that the government brought to the state and to society. The attack that occurred early this morning had been foreshadowed by the extremely suspicious shooting against a riot police bus in Zografou 15 days earlier.

The country's setting has changed dramatically in the past month. The police and the government fully lost control of events after the murder of the 15-year-old schoolboy. The prestige of the security forces and their acceptance by society had reached a low point, even regarding rudimentary police activities such as issuing tickets to drivers.

In the football fields, even yesterday fans were beating policemen. The same happened in Piraeus last week at the solidarity demonstration for syndicalist Katerina Kuneva. A martyr was definitely needed by the other side in the interest of balance and to provide an answer to the police's existential morass.

On the political level, the horizon was, and remains, very dark for the government. The actions announced by youth groups even on New Year's Eve served as a reminder that disturbances in Education will continue in 2009. The prime minister has but a single public relations hand to play, one that will be burned very quickly: the upcoming cabinet reshuffle.

This is because, contrary to what the Media are trying to convince us of, by consuming thousands of trees and airtime hours on guessing about personalities and radical changes, the reshuffle will not change in the slightest the policy of a degenerate government that stinks from the head down. To bring society on its side and tame the disturbance in education in the interest of restoring order, the government, too, needed a victim from the other side.

All this is not to say that it was the government that set up yesterday's murderous attack; perhaps some would have like the idea but they are thoroughly incapable or organizing and implementing it. The government and the Ministry of Public Order are under scrutiny for conspicuously ignoring the statements, photographs and videos concerning the hooded police collaborators who acted during the dark evenings of December. Obviously they have also done nothing to solve the case of the shots fired in Zografou.

The greatest responsibility the government has to bear is that in losing control and tearing down the entire system it has made available rich ground for the para-state to take action. The same goes for that ever so sinful National Intelligence Service whose sole occupation in recent years has been to cover up the abductions of Pakistanis and the scandal of the wiretappings that continue. The para-state is mobilized when the state and political leadership wane.

Today's murderous attack against the riot policemen places the country in a very dangerous orbit. It initiates a cycle of blood that definitely must stop. In the article forecasting that 2009 would be the "Year of the Para-State" published in Tvxs on 2 January, I had stressed that those who wish to protest -- and must do so -- against the education mess and about where the country is headed, need to remove the hoods they are wearing. The democratic game is played with open cards and this is especially the case in the wake of today's events.

There is, however, something that remains beyond the purview of the young protesters. The problem of the para-state and where the country is heading is primarily political. The government has lost control and has become dangerous. That does not necessarily mean that the next one will cope, especially as the social and economic crisis will grow exponentially during 2009. But the current government must leave before it is too late. For the sake of the country and of the government itself.