The real problem

I have been doing this job long enough not to be surprised by the ruthlessness so vividly displayed in the infamous recorded conversation about the deadly 2018 wildfire in Mati. I remember a police officer in an important position once telling me, unperturbed: "If I had information that this or that person would be murdered and I thought this would get rid of my main competition, I wouldn't tell anyone." Then there was a senior military officer who had a meltdown on the night of the 1996 Imia crisis: "I didn't even deserve to make brigadier. The party promoted me. And I just lost it that night; I wasn't ready for such an incident."

This is the problem in Greece. It is institutional and deeply political. The former fire chief is a symptom of a disease, the product of a cancer that has been eating away at the Greek state for decades. Secret dealings and games are in his DNA;...