By Paschos Mandravelis
Is the media’s preoccupation with former prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ book excessive? Probably, but it is justified, not only because of the innuendos, attacks and political gossip it causes. The traumatic memories of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government of 2015-2019 are fresh, and it doesn’t take much digging for them to resurface.
We are not only referring to the horrible first six months of 2015, but also to the attempt to influence liberal institutions, which are the counterweights of the executive branch (Parliament, justice, media, nongovernmental organizations, etc.) that distinguish Western from illiberal democracies. The latter, by definition, “hide anti-democratic practices behind typical democratic procedures.” In Hungary, Russia and Venezuela, elections are held, but because the “levers of power” – in SYRIZA parlance – are controlled by the ruling party, the result of the citizens’ vote is a given.
Those – admittedly inept – attempts by SYRIZA and ANEL proved unsuccessful and complacency prevailed. Those who protested at the time thought that after 2019, when Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was elected, there would be no more risks for democracy, and most of them became cheerleaders of the new situation; some of them with a certain compensation.
Perhaps that is why what is being heard in the misdemeanor court where the trial of four company executives linked to Greece’s Predator spyware scandal is under way is not being discussed by anyone. For example, the legal representative of the company that sold the surveillance software, Stamatis Trimbalis, testified that “when I went to testify before the parliamentary investigative committee, I had been given more prepared answers from the accused and a close associate of his. And when I left, they called me and said, ‘OK, we learned that you did well.’” He even claimed, as reported in Kathimerini on November 21, that he was scared when the first reports about the wiretapping scandal began. “They told me not to listen to all this, and that as long as New Democracy is in power, we have nothing to fear.”
Another witness, a major general of the Hellenic Police and former director of the Security Forensic Laboratories, testified that not only had her cellphone been infected with Predator, but the message read, “If you continue like this, you will have the fate of Giolas, Karaivaz and the others,” in reference to two journalists whose murders remain unresolved.
We do not know how reliable these testimonies are, but they seem to concern no one – except for one judge. The trial for the largest scandal involving the secret surveillance of politicians, the head of the armed forces, journalists and others, is being heard at a single-member misdemeanor court in Athens.
(Source: Ekathimerini.com)