In Greece of 2017, some people seem to live in … Ancient times where a citizen could be banished from the state of Athens by popular vote (Ostracism) for a period of ten years.
In the village of Volissos on the island of Chios a member of the board of the local culture association asked to expel a member of the community society for supporting the refugees cause.
In contrast to the procedure under the Athenian democracy, the board member did not ask that the name of the person to be exploded should be written on pottery shards (Ostraka) and a voting should follow. The board member asked the collection of signatures for this purpose.
The “unpopular” member of the community, the man who could be a threat to the state of Volissos or even a potential tyrant for the local society, is writer and farmer Yiannis Makridakis.
Makridakis made the issue public in his blog yiannismakridakis.gr
He wrote that the said board member justified his request saying that Makridakis “was not from Volissos” – although he was born in Chios – and furthermore that “he creates a climate in favor of the refugees in the village and public opinion by writing that the Volissos community has warmly accepted and helped refugees – which was not true.”
The president and the other board members rejected the request and informed Makridakis about it. However the case left several questions open.
“Supposedly, the association board accepted the request, how could the ostracism be realized?” Makridakis wonders and notes:
“Suppose they draft the ostracism document and collect signatures. How will they proceed? Will they go to the mayor and will require to have me banished? Will they go to the bishop and will require to excommunicate me? Will they go to police and required my imprisonment? Will they take their request to the popular assembly and require a fire in the square or will they bring the request to me in the hope that I will voluntarily go away?”
Underlining that such a document would be something to be proud of, Makridakis stresses that together with him half of the village population should be kicked out as well, that part of the population that keeps supplying the refugees with “eggs, meat, fruit, cakes, clothes, shoes and some have also opened their homes to them and come up for their food expenses.”
Sharply criticizing “psychological traumas, ignorance and complex of an unsatisfied personality and life” Makridakis notes in his blog post:
“I honestly wonder about the bottomless stupidity of some people.”
In another blog post, a day later, Makridakis writes that they indeed used to collect signatures and have people – in fact :civil servants – expelled from the village in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
“Sometimes they expelled people even without signature collection. If some of the village notables had problems with a teacher, a gendarme or a rural constable they could turn to the local MP and have the civil servant transferred to another post” away from the village.
PS Albert Einstein said it long ago: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
This peasant mentality is what has stopped Greece from becoming a serious modern country. These people need a good boot up the ass, and a threat to sue them for behaviour damaging to Greece and its reputation — not to mention contravening the Constitution.
“To be exploded”? That is a bit of a drastic way of ostracizing somebody…
May be you can publish something from his books here?
if you translate – with pleasure