The criticism at the Greek political system is fair, said Greek President Karolos Papoulias.
President Papoulias delivered a speech on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the democracy restoration in Greece.
“The responsibility for the Greek decline is mainly dependent on the political class that is required to guide developments and the disapproval that the political system currently receives is often roughly generalized, but in the core it is fair,” he said.
Papoulias spoke of a Greece “which became a republic, but not a modern European democracy“. He called the state to implement first the laws and to demonstrate that “equal rights are for all, without exceptions for the powerful, that the Constitution is not meaningless, that the financial burdens are distributed fairly and that education and health are not offered only to the privileged.”
Only then, “despite the crisis and the poverty that inevitably affects large sections of the population, we can expect a breakthrough,” he said.
The President of the Republic stated that “the protest is fair and justified, but not when it is expressed via autistic corporatism and indifference to the social majority”.
Referring to the economic crisis, he said that the outburst of the economic crisis ended a historical cycle for the Greek democracy, a cycle launched in 1974. He noticed that despite the rise of living standards, “the administration was not modernized, the relations between citizens and political system remained those of a client, the rule of law was not sufficiently developed and that in Greek society prevailing social attitudes were short-sighted and destructive.”
“Greece became a republic but not a modern European democracy. Despitr EU funding, we were not able, to build neither a sound and broad production base for the country nor transparent structures in the management of public property, “said President of the Republic.
