Greece - No Country For Young Arrogance

In an August 2022 essay by Alexander Clapp, published in the NYT, I found the following quote which I have cited many times since then:

"It is, rather, the unsustainable contradiction between the country Mr. Mitsotakis insists on pitching abroad — an unimpeachably democratic state whose respect for the rule of law and liberal bona fides ought to be rewarded with corporate investments and tourism dollars — and the one he actually presides over.“

Prime Minister Mitsotakis is an excellent salesman of his country and he certainly has sold me on it. It is only in the last few months that some doubtful clouds have shown up on the horizon. To sum it up in one word: arrogance. I had given 3 examples thereof in the above-linked article. 

Still, I felt quite uncomfortable voicing these crescent doubts because I was afraid that in the midst of Mr. Mitsotakis' success, they might be considered sacrilegeous. So much more was I surprised to read in today's Ekathimerini a commentary by Alexis Papachelas who started out by saying:

"This is not an easy country; not by a long chalk. A part of it looks and may also be European. Another is deeply Balkan and looks, in fact, a lot like what the international literature would call a “failed state.” The struggle between the two is constant and sometimes it is even violent. Anyone who is ambitious or crazy enough to govern it has to deal with this struggle between good, European Greece and Greece of yesteryear, between what it could be and what it is at its worst."

So far so good. Anyone who has followed the scandal around the recent train accident can agree with that. But then Papachelas continued (the emphasis is mine):

"The current prime minister has a very clear picture of where the country should be headed. In some areas, the country has made progress, and quite a lot of it. But this government has also made mistakes. No one can change the state alone, nor can they promise to change Greece 0.5 to Greece 2.0 in just a few years. Such undertakings require humility, and what the government is paying for right now is overselling its managerial capabilities. It settled for many of the bad habits of bad Greece and in some instances acted as if it owned the country. Some of the examples are painful and make people mad. The condition of our hospitals is a case in point. Greece is changing, but important areas are being left behind."

That is exactly the concern I have voiced in recent months. I see no Greek politician around who could represent the country internationally as well as Mr. Mitsotakis does ("pitching his country") and I think it is extremely important for Greece's domestic success to be represented well internationally. That has to do with credibility. If Mr. Mitsotakis were to stumble domestically because of cockiness or arrogance, it would do enormous harm to Greece internationally. And that, of course, would affect Greece's domestic success.