MacroPolis

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, earned its reputation mostly as a critique of Western colonialism. However, the author also wanted it to convey his horror at what he called the “criminality of inefficiency and pure selfishness” – the exploitation of Africa and Africans hidden behind a thin veneer of imperialistic grandeur.

The journey through Congo taken by Conrad’s hero, Marlow, is littered with obstacles born of disorganisation or disregard - sunken steamboats, missing rivets and dead pack animals. In the process, he discovers that the idea of the white man being a civilizing presence in the country is a sham.

February 28 marks the two-year anniversary of Greece’s worst rail disaster, the Tempe train crash, which killed 57 people. In some ways, our journey over the last two years has been like Marlow’s: As we picked our way through crumpled, charred train carriages, excavated earth and strewn body parts, we discovered that little of substance actually exists – it has been corroded by our own caustic mix of inefficiency and selfishness.

As the Financial Times lauded our recovering economy or Handelsblatt marvelled at how the bad eurozone pupil had now turned good, we found that once you scratch beneath the headline macroeconomic and fiscal data, there is darkness. An archaic railway system, poorly trained emergency services, inadequate forensic investigations, a jumbled judicial process and a political system interested only in looking after itself.

The Tempe crash occurred behind the façade of our reclaimed international respect. Its fallout is threatening to bring our Potemkin village of success crashing down.

Two years on from the tragedy, nobody has yet been held accountable. The judicial investigation into what is an admittedly complex case is continuing, while the parliamentary inquiry proved inconclusive amid complaints from the victims’ relatives and the opposition parties that the process had been stifled by the government, essentially turning it into a whitewash.

The transport minister at the time of the crash, Kostas Karamanlis, resigned out of “respect for the memory of the people who died so unfairly.” A few months later, though, he was re-elected as an MP for the ruling New Democracy party in the national elections. He did not clarify whose memory he was respecting by standing for re-election. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has asked for the immunity of Karamanlis, as well as his predecessor Christos Spirtzis, to be lifted due to suspicions of breach of duty in connection to Contract 717, a partly EU-funded scheme to ensure there was a fully functioning remote traffic control and signalling system on the Athens-Thessaloniki train route. The request has been ignored by the Greek authorities.

Aftermath

Beyond the accident itself, there is the issue of how the aftermath was handled. The authorities removed carriages and earth, some of which contained human remains, from the crash site and paved it over before a proper forensic investigation had been carried out. This has left families in the dark about the cause of the fire that broke out after the passenger train collided with the freight train. Some independent experts acting on behalf of the relatives, who have lost faith in the authorities giving them a full explanation of what happened and why, believe the explosion and subsequent blaze caused more than half of the deaths at Tempe.

In the absence of an official and substantiated explanation, the cause of this fire has become the subject of intense speculation. The victims’ families believe the freight train may have been carrying unregistered flammable chemicals. In a TV interview a few weeks after the crash – and before the results of any investigation had been announced or any court had delivered a verdict – Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ruled out this explanation, focussing only on the human error of a station master in Larissa who diverted the trains onto the same track. A year later, the Greek PM doubled down and spoke of “conspiracy theories” around the fire.

The mass protests that took place in Athens, Thessaloniki and dozens of other cities and towns in Greece on January 26 prompted a change in the PM’s approach. Tens of thousands of people gathered peacefully to protest a perceived lack of accountability and justice. The protests were arranged without the backing of any political parties or unions, and it was clear that many of those attending were not regular demonstrators, and may even have been supporters of the ruling centre-right New Democracy party.  

Only a couple of days after the protests, Mitsotakis gave a hastily-arranged TV interview in which he no longer appeared so sure about what the freight train was carrying, and refused to rule anything out. He also admitted that mistakes were made “in the field” after the crash and that the parliamentary inquiry into the crash was not the House’s “finest hour.”

Mitsotakis’s aim was to appear more conciliatory, to pacify a clearly angry public as opinion polls showed that more than 70 pct of Greeks felt the government was involved in a cover up and a similar percentage did not trust the country’s judiciary.

All that Mitsotakis offered in his defence was that he may have been misled about the freight train’s load. No explanation was given as to why the parliamentary inquiry was less than thorough or why operational decisions, such as paving over the crash site, were taken. It was not a good look for someone who has cultivated an image as a surefooted and enlightened leader.

If he was misled, it suggests he is politically naïve. If he was not aware of what was happening operationally it indicates he is not a competent leader and if he knew the parliamentary inquiry was a whitewash but let it happen anyway, it implies his moral compass is faulty.

After realising that this defensive stance was not an adequate response and actually made the PM and his government look weak, the Mitsotakis administration changed tack again. Over the last few days, they have gone on the offensive. They are accusing the opposition of exploiting the tragedy for its own political gain and have even attacked the victims’ families, claiming that they are politicising the issue.

Ahead of the demonstrations planned to mark the two-year anniversary of the crash, on February 28, ministers claimed the protests are directed against the PM and the government, rather than being expressions of solidarity or driven by a desire for justice. Some New Democracy officials and government-friendly commentators have gone as far as claiming that there is a plot to destabilise or even overthrow the government.

Apparently, a quarter of the way into the 21^st century, Greece is not able to safely operate the sparsest railway network in the European Union, but there are (unidentified) forces in the country which can coordinate and execute the overthrow of the government.

Political cost

The reality is that the ruling conservatives have been running away from the political cost of this crisis from the moment the accident happened just a few months before the general elections in 2023. Even though the shoddy state of the Greek railway is the result of many years of failings, not just those during the 5.5 years New Democracy has been in power, after seeing this tragedy take place on its watch, the government has avoided almost every opportunity to help shed light on the causes of the disaster and - in the interest of all Greeks - understand how to prevent it happening again. Now, faced with simmering public anger, rather than offering a course correction, it is being drawn into a dance of polarisation for which there are many obliging partners.

The noise around the Tempe issue has been amplified over the last few weeks by the curious appearance of CCTV video footage which claims to show the freight train involved in the crash moments before impact without any suspect load on its flatbed carriages. The video was discovered by the security firm which operates the camera in improbable circumstances, thereby only fuelling suspicion and causing more intense wrangling.

Things got even darker and more convoluted when the son of the chief prosecutor at the Larissa Appeals Court, which has handled aspects of the Tempe probe, was found dead recently after having been missing for several weeks. The rumour mill spun out of control, sucking in the government and the opposition as they batted insinuations and accusations back and forth.

It did not have to be this way. This agonising quest for justice, and the more recent conjecture-driven frenzy, would not have happened if the authorities had treated this matter with the seriousness and respect it demanded from the start. They contributed to the creation of a circus around a tragedy.

Whether in Greece or elsewhere, disasters happen and governments are forced to deal with them. The way in which they react speaks not only to the moral fibre of those in charge, but also reveals much about whether those governing appreciate or care that they have a duty to their citizens to put things right. This improvement comes through transparency and probity.

Contrast, for example, the way that the Mitsotakis administration has dealt with Tempe to the manner in which the increasingly unpopular government of Margaret Thatcher (who has many admirers in New Democracy) reacted to the Clapham Junction rail crash in 1988, when 35 people died following a signal failure in south London on what was then still a state-owned railway system. Firstly, in her press conference immediately following the accident, Thatcher refused to speculate on the causes of the crash (“we just have to wait for someone to find the facts”). The late British PM, who was prickly about being questioned or scrutinised, also committed to a full inquiry “that makes it clear to everyone that whatever has happened will come out into the open”.

The independent inquiry into the accident was launched formally about two months after the crash and had concluded gathering evidence in less than 60 days. Apart from identifying the cause of the collision (faulty wiring installed by an overworked and unsupervised technician), it came up with 93 recommendations for improving rail safety and the response by the emergency services. After a series of train derailments in recent years, fears were expressed that the UK rail industry had started to forget the lessons of the Clapham Junction disaster and a new report was produced by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB), containing updated safety recommendations.

This is how functioning democracies react to tragedies: They follow due process, free of political comment and interference, with the aim of shedding light on what happened and how change for the better can be made. It does not make them perfect, but learning from their mistakes is how countries, like people, can progress.

In the case of Tempe, there has been no genuine effort to search for the truth or to use it as an opportunity for collective progress. The government did make a concession in this direction by appointing a board to the National Organisation for the Investigation of Air and Rail Accidents (EODASAAM) in September 2023, seven months after the Tempe crash. However, last year the European Commission found that the body was under-resourced and understaffed and raised questions about its independence. EODASAAM is expected to deliver its findings this week, two years after the accident. Reports suggest it will be inconclusive on the issue of the fire that followed the collision of the two trains.

Rabbit hole

In a democracy, the opposition also has a responsibility to ensure that the legal process is followed, institutions are respected and accountability is upheld. While Greece’s mainstream opposition parties – PASOK, SYRIZA and New Left – have sought to hold the authorities to account over the Tempe issue in Parliament or by expressing concerns about deficiencies in the judicial process, they seem to be losing sight of their role and are getting drawn into a purely political tussle.

These three parties have not seen any opinion poll gains from the recent wave of dissatisfaction. Instead, it has been fringe and extreme parties, Greek Solution and Voice of Reason on the far right, and Course for Freedom on the far left, that have gained support.

These “anti-systemic” parties have been happy to cultivate rumours around the Tempe crash and to engage in deleterious personal battles with government officials. Alongside this, fringe media outlets and social media accounts as well as self-styled experts are gleefully feeding off the public’s frustration by engaging in speculation to attract attention.

This has created a rabbit hole which the mainstream parties will struggle to avoid slipping into. Sensing that they have a unique opportunity to score a direct hit against Mitsotakis, they risk tripping up, or tripping each other up, in their rush to make a mark. They have been in competition over who will call for a parliamentary inquiry based on the evidence gathered in the judicial investigations and who will trigger an ultimately meaningless confidence vote in Parliament. The precarious position the government’s rivals are in is underlined by the fact that opinion polls indicate that more than 70 pct of Greeks feel the opposition parties are trying to exploit the Tempe tragedy.

The biggest danger is that in an effort to focus on the more scandalous (and therefore more politically damaging for the government) aspects of the Tempe story – such as, the alleged chemical load and the paving over of the crash site – the opposition will stoke up a media/social media free-for-all and we will lose sight of what is undisputed about the tragedy, and shocking enough on its own.

Systemic failure

Let us strip away everything else and think of the 57 people of six nationalities who died at Tempe, 30 of who were aged 35 or younger, with the youngest victim being 15. They were allowed to travel by train on an understaffed railway network, along a stretch of line where the automatic signalling was not working, station masters had been rushed through training, remote surveillance and control had not been installed and radio communication was not functioning. The two trains were travelling towards each other for 12 minutes and nobody was aware of the impending disaster. And, even if they had been, there was no way of them preventing it remotely or otherwise. All this after railway workers had warned that the system was unsafe and Greece’s railways had been known to be dangerous for years. This was a massive systemic failure, an abrogation of responsibility by a callous system.

Maria Karystianou, who lost her 20-year-old daughter in the crash and who has headed the victims’ families fight for justice, summed up the state of the Greek railway when she told the parliamentary inquiry that knowing now how the system operates, she would not use it to transport vegetables, let alone people. It remains the most devastatingly accurate and cutting remark about this tragedy.

Being made to face up to the system’s decay should have been enough for those in power - for it is they who have the authority as well as the main responsibility - to realise that the gravity of the situation went beyond any concerns about political careers and futures. This was not a time for hubris or business-as-usual. This was a life or death matter, a moment to rip everything up and start again.

Instead, inefficiency and selfishness have prevailed. The investigation after the crash was botched, or constrained; the parliamentary committee controlled by the ruling party eschewed the opportunity to establish a clear picture and glean common learnings to improve passenger safety; the victims’ families have met with contempt and accusations of defaming Greece or playing politics; the PM has made public comments that could prejudice any judicial investigation while only muddying the waters; and the opposition parties are losing sight of the fact that inflicting damage on the government is not the priority here.

And, while this has been playing out over the last two years, space has been created for opportunists, political and otherwise, to profit from toxicity and speculation that will only damage whatever efforts are being made to uncover the truth and ensure justice is done for the 57 victims and their families.

Perhaps the only fragment of hope that we can cling on to from the last two years is the determination of the victims’ families to extract answers and the willingness of citizens to support their cause without the intercession of political parties. Apart from this, the picture is desolate.

Somehow, since that frightening night in 2023 we have managed to wind our way from a very dark place to an even bleaker one. We had an opportunity to be better but, to paraphrase a line from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we chose to remain loyal to the nightmare of our choice.