“The feeling of insecurity has intensified beyond measure, with the instigator, many times, of the actions of the government itself” states Michalis Kalogirou in his article.
The government stands embarrassed, if not hostile, towards the people and especially the young men and women and the artists who are protesting these days, after the completion of the “Lignadis trial” in the first instance. He does not realize that they are not asking for the application of their own law – they are not taking the law into their own hands – but rather they are asking for an explanation of the way the Justice has applied the law.
In other words, they are asking for exactly what constitutes the backbone of the rule of law, the strengthening of the law of the state and equality. In fact, they try to be heard by the institutions, without being treated as a mob. They want to pronounce their name, which is why they emphasize that “judicial decisions are issued in the name of the Greek people”. They are the ones who, through their movement, their processes and their lives, the new and every change will be born.
If, of course, we have reached the point where today we have outbreaks of movements in favor of the application of laws and in favor of equality, it means that we have been led to a limit point. This also means that the feeling of insecurity has been heightened beyond measure, often fueled by the actions of the government itself. Insecurity of all kinds, social and personal, insecurity against crime, but also insecurity for individual and collective health, during the pandemic. Insecurity in the workplace and insecurity to be precise in heating, fuel, roofing.
However, widespread insecurity also exists because the state, with its services and infrastructure, has retreated from everywhere, either officially or indirectly, having been left to degenerate from shortages and underfunding, even at a time when the country has no the memorandum vise to press it, but instead a European tolerance of spending and European financing of reforms.
So insecurity because the staff state, which had been proclaimed as the effective guardian of the law, turns out to be an inadequate and corrupt state.
The government, once again, attempted to treat a court decision as a matter of political damage management through the well-known propaganda tricks of criminal populism. Willing to support any kind of anti-scientific narrative, journalists and columnists, indifferent to ensuring citizens’ equanimity, a self-evident condition of democracy. At first, Lignadis was released from prison under the Paraskevopoulos law. Slander. Personal and political targeting that is done in any release in recent years. The sentence was then suspended, with the criminal codes of 2019. Lie. The suspension of the first-trial convict was granted by order of 2010, while the institution of suspension until the judgment of the appeal court has been in effect for decades.
Finally, after repeated denials, they invented and propagated the trick that the rape of minors by its own legislative initiative is now punishable by life imprisonment, a sentence that could not have been suspended. Distortion of the truth. There was no way to do this in this particular case, since, even if the 2019 reform had not taken place, the previous provisions of the Criminal Code did not provide for life imprisonment, but temporary imprisonment.
The government of N.D. that’s what he chose to do. Instead of addressing the citizens with democratic maturity, instead of strengthening in practice the free access to Justice for the vulnerable, especially for the victims of racist, sexist and gender-based violence, by developing infrastructures of assistance, housing, psychological, financial and legal support for them. Instead of taking the initiative to speed up the trials and establish, in cooperation with the bar associations, a protocol to protect the personality of the victims during the hearing process. These he chooses not to do.
A few more thoughts. The opinion that criticizing specific decisions of the Court of Justice also means a total questioning of it as an institution is laughable. SYRIZA P.S. it has both the ability and the obligation to listen to the criticism of the Greek people. Criticism that is exercised in each case individually with criteria of equality and fairness, based on the text of the legal rules that the state has established.
Equality in the application of the law of the state is sought, and will be sought, by citizens, and the rule of law has had, and will continue to have, an inextricable relationship with democratic struggles. We need to highlight the value these concepts have for the younger generations, for Generation Z, which is a generation that speaks up and wants to be heard without the criticism of being uninformed or being manipulated.
To talk about the expectations of citizens in relation to institutions that give substance to transparency, accountability and in general the rule of law, such as the judge, as an independent judge, without elitism and without distance from society, or the lawyer, not as a provocateur who insults victims or as a TV court star, but as an essential collaborator of Justice. Let’s also talk about the institutions and the journalism that should exercise control over power, instead of pending on the ranking table “Update 108”.
We will continue to defend the future, fighting today, political, democratic fights, with positions and proposals, which make up the progressive front, a front to get out of the institutional decline we are living in.
* Mr. Michalis Kalogirou is a former Minister of Justice, director of the political office of the president of SYRIZA.
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