The famous scene from «Bakalogatos»—I’m sure you remember it—where the legendary Zikos yells, «Are you arguing with me?» and when Rizos replies, «I am,» he turns in terror toward his supposed protector, shouting, «Don’t listen to what he’s saying—hold me back»—is no longer just an old black-and-white comedy. If Kostas Hatzichristos were alive today—that masterful analyst of the Greek psyche through farce—he’d be rubbing his hands together. It is the official handbook for the practice of government policy and national security in this corner of the Balkans, full of surprises.
Following the heinous crime in Thessaloniki, the symbolism of the domestic deep state has crossed every line of tolerance. We are witnessing the familiar, dismal spectacle of government and party officials from New Democracy making deafening, almost hysterical statements, posing as the guardians of a bourgeois morality that they themselves long ago ground to a pulp in the meat grinder of political realism. Beside them, the familiar spineless journalists, those intellectual eunuchs of television talk shows, indulge in pedantic, supposedly profound analyses that resemble scientific textbooks of nothingness, written by people who have never seen reality outside the air-conditioned studio.
So we’re begging all of you: Catch them. If you can’t do that, at least stop pretending to be angry avengers while you’re begging behind the scenes for them to keep you in office so you won’t have to do your job. Because, ladies and gentlemen in power, the case you’re so worked up about—whatever it may be at any given moment on the long list of our nation’s Kafkaesque legal proceedings—lacks, so far, one small, insignificant detail: evidence. There is no manifesto, no claim of responsibility, no evidence, no DNA, not even an arrest. And yet, the circus of the verdict has already been set up in the television studios.
We are living in the era of the absolute triumph of presumption of guilt. If a woman is found murdered with a knife, the social and political reaction—fueled by talk shows—reaches a verdict instantly. «Since that’s how femicides happen, her husband must have killed her. Lock him up!» No investigation, no witnesses, no confession. The definition of the rule of law in 21st-century Greece is speculation. Everyone is entitled to suspect whatever feeds their delusions—from terrorism to a mafia showdown, and from personal disputes to a shadowy provocation by foreign powers. But justice—in theory, at least; let’s not kid ourselves—is not administered based on the instincts of a coffeehouse regular.
«The Greek police possess a unique, almost supernatural ability: they solve the perfect, invisible crime in the dark, yet are blinded by the glare of midday sunlight.»
The question isn’t whether the police can. The question is whom they choose to see. The very same police force that managed to track down the murderer of Nikos Sergianopoulos—a phantom of a man, hidden in the darkest and most inaccessible haunts of the marginal underworld, proved to be a colossus. The same police force that tracked down the murderers of Manolis Kantaris, illegal immigrants with no trace, no identification, lost in the chaos of illegality, did its duty. The same police force that solved the Panagopoulos kidnapping, cracking the «perfect crime» involving ghost phones, with no DNA evidence and no security cameras to have recorded the perpetrators, triumphed.
How is it, then, that this very same police force—all-seeing and highly capable as it is—can’t find the slightest clue about the Marfin criminals? A crime committed in broad daylight, in the very heart of the capital, under the watchful eye of countless cameras, with hundreds of witnesses, and with the perpetrators escaping via the subway? Sixteen years later, the case opens and closes like a rusty window in an abandoned house. No progress. Just a narrative flowing like clear water from a government faucet, ready to wash away political incompetence. The same goes for the murder of Giolia, and the same for the executions of Kapelonis and Fountoulis.
As long as you don’t catch them—as long as the perpetrators remain faceless, nameless, without specific characteristics, and without an identity—the better it is for the industry of petty partisan speculation. The culprit turns into a liquid element, taking the shape of whatever container you pour him into each time. Are the polls not looking good? Blame the «ideological hegemony of the Left.» Is there a public outcry over scandals? Remember Marfin. Are we passing anti-popular measures and are strikes intensifying? Dust off a song by Panos Vlachos, two years later, to set the stage for a scenario of artificial victimization spread across a vast space-time continuum.
«You don’t say anything about Marfin» has become the ultimate cult refrain of the Greek internet, the digital incense with which the right-wing camp exorcises every one of its own failures. It’s the reheated leftovers you serve up every time reality undermines the government’s narrative.
And please, spare us the fairy tales about the «evil Left» that supposedly prevents you from enforcing the law. Which Left prevented you from keeping Irianna in prison, when her only «crime» was going on vacation to Barcelona? Which Left stopped you from convicting Romanos based on a “trace” of DNA found at a site that had been completely cleared out? When you want to put innocent people in prison, no one on the Left stands in your way. So why are they standing in your way now that you have to put the real culprits behind bars?;
Which Left, really, forced you to revoke the permits and basic rights exclusively for those convicted in the «November 17» case, while the knife-wielding thugs of Golden Dawn, the murderers of Tembonera and Kaltezas, and—until recently—Korkoneas, walk free, looking good and fully rehabilitated? Not to mention the old coup plotters and torturers of the Junta who died in their mansions or enjoyed the institutional immunity of your state.
Enough already with the shows. Enough with the antics, the absurdities, and the crocodile tears of televised compassion. The exploitation of death and mudslinging are the last resort of the politically bankrupt. If you have a government, if you have a police force, if you have even a shred of dignity: Arrest them. Otherwise, keep Ziko inside you and be quiet.
