He was a great of the modern political history of Greece for some. But a great “magician” for some others. In an almost juggling manner, he managed to renounce his responsibilities, for all the negative things that happened during his term of office and which contributed to the transformation in a few years of the “strong Greece”, which he had reduced to his slogan, into an example to be avoided if not black sheep of Europe. He never had to account for the infamous “Greek statistics”, which for many in Europe were equated with cheating the European institutions in order for Greece to enter the Eurozone and were later seen by the majority of economic analysts as the beginning of the path to bankruptcy.

Black funds and imprisoned ministers

He never considered it his duty to reveal what finally happened to the funds of PASOK, “the million of Tsoukatos”, with the bribes for Siemens and the equipment, which even sent his own ministers to prison. Did he have knowledge of all this, or was he so naive after all, so blindly trusting his ministers? He did not feel responsible for the predictions of the perpetual “stock market rally”, which he should have avoided institutionally, and which eventually took the throats of many, blinded by the prospect of endless speculation.

He never admitted how short-sighted it was to fill Attica with pharaonic “Olympic” works that have been rotting for two decades unused, at a time when other countries much stronger than Greece preferred temporary solutions with “solvables”, which were removed after the end of major events. He never had to be “measured” against the evidence for the enormity of the entanglement, which all but receded in his years.

In the role of “wise old man”

His almost “saintization”, his complete disconnection from the responsibilities for what continues to plague Greece after his withdrawal from active politics, is rather a unique phenomenon in the political history of Europe. And one would hardly argue that they honor the political and media system itself.

Even the near disappearance of the party with which he was identified was never associated with the years of his own prime ministership. Instead he was elevated for years to a “wise elder” role, choosing when, how and on what subject to share his wisdom.

Older journalists whisper that this is also due to the fact that during his years the status of non-papers, of… remote-controlled reports that he made sure his staff distributed on time and that anyone who ignored them ran a serious risk of automatically being included in the list of those excluded from the official information.

The gap between words and reality

He indeed succeeded in rhetorically establishing “modernization” and “Europeanization” as a national goal. This is considered his main achievement. But the contrast between slogans and reality, which the Greeks continue to experience, even after leaving the memorandums, have given these terms in the minds of many a negative connotation or at best a suspicion… of an anecdote.

Of course, all this will be judged with the necessary distance by History and its writers in the future. Until then, let’s wait stoically, unaffected by the dominant narrative of idealization of an era, which is not so far away as to bet on oblivion and certainly not at all detached from what we continue to experience to this day.