The Greek Parliament is a former Palace of the Bavarian king of Greece in the 19th century, Otto. It has beautiful marbles, antique furniture, prestigious paintings. Indeed this is how the Parliament of a European country and indeed a European country with a long and tormented history should be. What is wrong then with the Greek Parliament? well its… Members!
In a report prepared by Kathimerini journalist Nikos Vafeiadis he has documented the luxury conditions in which the Greek MPs work. Or rather do not work. They receive high salaries (of approx 10,000 Euro per month ) of which only 50% is taxed normally (the other half is taxed separately), they have all kinds of free services e.g. free hotel allowance for MPs from outside Athens, free tickets, 52 free air tickets if their electoral district is farther than 200 km from Athens. They have FOUR assistants who are public fonctionnaires, transferred from other services to the Parliament to serve the MPs. They have black cars leased by the Parliament. They receive a pension at age 65 if they have served for 4 years. And if they are members of the Parliament and aged over 65 they receive both their monthly salary AND the pension! Former prime ministers have offices overlooking the national garden (one of central Athens few green areas) even if they are no longer MPs!
Employees of the Parliament are far too numerous (over 2,000 – so many that not everybody comes to work every day because there would not be enough chairs for them to sit!) and receive 16 salaries per year. When all other public fonctionnaires in Greece have seen their 13th and 14th salary (their holiday allowance so to speak) reduced by approx. 70%) the fonctionnaires serving at the Parliament have managed to incorporate these extra-extra salaries as special allowances. The Parliament TV station has over 100 employees when its viewers rate is below 1%.
Such conditions were a scandal before the crisis anyway and they had often been debated in public. But they are a ‘crime against the citizens’ (if I am to paraphrase the ‘crime against humanity’) under the present conditions. There is an ancient Greek sentence from the story of the war of Troy, that we often use in colloquial Greek: ΑΙΔΩΣ ΑΡΓΕΙΟΙ!! (SHAME ON YOU PEOPLE OF ARGOS). Well this is the only thing I can say: SHAME ON YOU Greek MPs and members of the Greek government. You go on mambling at radio and TV channels about how bad you feel for the austerity packages – but how many have actually refused their black cars? (they have just decided two days ago to limit these cars to 1400cc power for those living in Athens and to 1800 cc for those outside Athens – what a sacrifice indeed! one wonders don’t they have private cars? can’t they pay for them with a 10,000 euro salary?!!) their four assistants and their ‘free’ tickets? (the tickets are not for free actually – they are paid with taxpayers money!) How many have declared it when they were absent from the Parliament so that as per the Parliament’s rules they would see their monthly salary (indemnity it is called of course) cut by 1/30 for each day of absence from ‘work’?