UPDATE: Tensions brew as Greece faces record 21,657 new covid cases in one day
As in America the pandemic elicits tremors not only across the country but in the corridors of power, too
ATHENS, Dec. 28—Greek headlines are sounding the alarm today over a covid explosion setting a dark new record of more than 21,000 cases—triggering political tremors in Athens, which as it happens is currently at the epicenter of this epidemiological “earthquake” with up to a reported 300% increase in cases.
A short time ago the center-left KINAL alliance, which notably includes the iconic Greek socialist party PASOK, hit out at the ruling New Democracy party in a Tweet, saying that the government has announced new measures [to stem the pandemic], “but they will be implemented in a week. The Government continues to be negative, as its priority is the management of political costs & not the protection of public health.” If those aren’t exactly fighting words, they are clearly oppositional—and there’s no way they could have been made public without the go-ahead of Nikos Androulakis, KINAL’s young President and rising Greek political star.
The language in the tweet is nowhere near as strident as that regularly employed by former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the floor of the Parliament against his arch-rival Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the current Prime Minister—the barbs those two have been known to trade can awe you with their exquisite shared enmity.
A statement from Tsipras’ far-left SYRIZA party issued today said “The only person who is not outraged by the government’s incredible incompetence is Mr Mitsotakis himself, who continues to be on vacation, while the country is on the brink.”
Unlike Tsipras however, Androulakis has not yet had the opportunity to lead and so the stakes of saying the wrong thing, even if at the right time, are considerably higher. The somewhat hushed criticism is really no surprise; there is broad consensus that Greece has handled the pandemic, organizationally at least, far better than the United States. And whereas in America, folks like the media creation known as “Dr. Fauci” seem to specialize more in self-interest and polarization than anything else, in Greece the pandemic generated a different kind of man in Sotiris Tsiodras, the physician who steered the country through last year’s lockdowns with rare composure and characteristic eloquence.
But the pressure on Greece’s national healthcare system is growing, daily deaths from severe covid cases are, worryingly, much higher proportional to the population than they are in, say, Israel, and public fatigue is growing in inverse proportion to the skyrocketing case numbers. No European government has it particularly easy right now but in Greece at least, in the run-up to another year of the nightmare that it’s worth remembering started in China, it doesn’t take a seismologist to see that the political fault lines which were already there are hardening with each new grim headline.
And from antiquity to modern times, Greece is no stranger to earthquakes.
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