My dear friends, good day to you!
A crowded Syngrou proves that Syngrou is crowded. It does not prove that citizens can bear the price of gasoline.
And yet, ND MP Spyros Koulkoudinas yesterday used the traffic on the avenue as an indication of the resilience of citizens in the face of rising fuel prices. He even went further: if someone cannot afford to give 10 euros to go to and return from work, they can use public transportation.
Reactions and clarifications followed. The MP argued that his phrases were taken out of context and that he never connected traffic on the roads with the government's decision on the excise tax. Clarification accepted. It does not change, however, the essence of what he said.
Because the worker who takes their car every day does not necessarily do so because they “can afford it”. They may do it because they have no other choice or because their work and obligations cannot be served otherwise. And they may, in order to fill up with gasoline, cut back somewhere else.
The issue, therefore, is not Mr. Koulkoudinas. It is the message that is being sent.
A few months ago, ND MP Christina Alexopoulou had provoked reactions with the famous “free is dead”, in the discussion about the cost faced by teachers who are called to serve far from their home area. Now came the 10 euros for gasoline and public transportation.
Isolated incidents, certainly. But when they are repeated, they begin to create an image. And in politics, image is a message. Even more so when the warning now comes from within the governing party itself.
Dora Bakoyannis spoke directly about the arrogance of ministers and called on them to “get off their high horse,” pointing out that after eight years there are people who have become tiresome. Dimitris Kairidis also spoke of arrogance and elitism, saying that ND’s main problem is its “bad self.”
When such warnings come from within the governing party, they can hardly be attributed to opposition exaggeration.
The problem of every government that remains in power for many years begins when familiarity with it turns into distance from those it governs. And it becomes greater when the absence of a strong alternative proposal is confused with the absence of social discontent. They are not the same thing.
The citizen may not have decided whom they want. But they know very well what they pay at the pump, what is left to them at the end of the month, and how easy it is for someone from a distance to instruct them on how they should get to work.
That is why arrogance is not simply a matter of political style. It is a political message. And messages in politics move in both directions. First the government sends, through its actions and words, its own messages to society. Society receives them. And when the time comes, it responds.
The ballot box simply records its response.