This article was published by Al Jazeera International.
The election of Greece’s reformist
prime minister could mark a change in political culture after decades of
overspending and a decade of austerity
When
Kyriakos Mitsotakis assumed his first cabinet post in 2012, Greeks broadly
agreed that he’d been seated before the poisoned chalice. Under the terms of a
freshly signed, €130bn emergency loan from the Eurozone, the conservatives had
to dismiss up to 25,000 state workers over two years and bring down the cost of
government. It was Mitsotakis’ job to get it done.
Over two years, he dismissed more than 5,000
people, including the entire municipal police force and two thirds of the state
television payroll –
something no Greek government had done in living memory.
He also introduced evaluation. “Impunity in the state is over,”
he told parliament in March 2014. “We will pull skeletons out of closets and we
will send people home who’ve provably engaged in illegal practices.”
Asked
about it on state television during his 2016 election campaign for the party
leadership, Mitsotakis said, “The dismissals were a difficult political
decision and I shouldered it myself without much support, but it was a government
commitment. I don’t appreciate ex post
facto criticism.”
