Néa Dhimokratía outrageously won yesterdays Greek elections despite being responsible for everything that is malignant in the country. The 42% of the population who made the choice of self rather than anything approaching altruistic concern for the erosion of a true bottom-up democracy should feel nothing but shame.
The rampant corruption that degrades many aspects of Greek society inevitably spreads over to football. Indeed, the parallel forms of corruption linking football and politics are unnervingly similar.
The confrontational elements which underpin both of these areas of obsessive national concern produce both a form of fake theatre and a lack of momentum in any positive direction as the constituent power bases de-energise one another through their blinkered competitive focus. Yet, at the top of this societal belief boxing, the political state itself is merely a carve up between two all-powerful political clans which have governed the country for over fifty years. Looking strictly at the division of power, the fiefdom shares more similarities with an African state as opposed to a European. The clans of Karamanlis and Papandreou share equivalence with Panathinaikos and Olympiacos both in terms of alleged political leanings and in their maintenance of a coercive duopoly.
Panathinaikos and Olympiacos are much much more than merely football teams. For a start, the Piraeus team are associated with the political left while the Trifilli (the Shamrocks) people come from the other side. These two teams are in dominant control of the Hellenic Super League to a degree that makes the Premiership quadropoly appear positively enlightening - the last thirteen titles have not left their combined grasp with Olympiacos winning all but one of the last eleven "competitions" allowing Panathinaikos just the one victory in coincidence with the 2004 Olympics. The duopolists duopolise other sports too with Panaithinaikos virtually replicating the Olympiacos footballing supremacy by winning nine national basketball titles in the last decade. As I said, it is a carve up.
The ethereal linkage of these two sports organisations to the population via the pseudo-claims to particular political allegiances is a sham. Although the working class en masse support the Thrylos of Piraeus, in a similar manner to American Blacks with Bill Clinton, the object of their adoration is part of the problem rather than part of the cure. The President of Olympiacos is one Socratis Kokkalis. As well as presiding over the Erythrolefki, Kokkalis is the Chief Executive Officer and major shareholder in Intracom which specialises in computer and defence system software development. Oh, and he's interested in betting... Intracom supplies software to OPAP, the Greek gambling monopoly. OPAP is a very interesting little set up. Government controlled, the OPAP monolith has exclusive rights to all gambling in Greece until 2020. Additionally, OPAP has close business ties with the Magic (sic) Sign, Ladbrokes. Collaboration exists both on a market making level and in more senior cooperative strategic business developmental areas. Ladbrokes are effectively gaining a slice of the very liquid Greek gambling market entirely illegally and even have their logo referenced on the ubiquitous OPAP betting coupons. Ladbrokes, doing something illegal??? Well, no actually, for once they aren't strictly if one looks at the situation hierarchically. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is insisting on Greece opening up its gambling markets to competition so that everybody can get a slice of people's addictions. The Greek government of Karamanlis said "Ohi" in a Metaxas stylee. The government, Kokkalis, OPAP and Ladbrokes are doing very nicely by maintaining a monopolistic structure with supportive cartelisations. William Hill, in their perennial battling with Ladbrokes, are not having any of this. Having being trumped by the Greek police after attempting to set up three gambling internet cafes in Arta, William Hill announced that it had filed for gaming licences in Greece and was planning to challenge the decisions in the ECJ if the Greek government refused to grant the licenses. Basically, the standard bookmaker sectoral strategy of "if you are unable to set up in the legal market, establish yourselves in the black market, and vice versa". As the president of OPAP, noted tellingly, "The only company with the right to operate betting in Greece is OPAP. Some people are getting rich while the Greek state hemorrhages."
Aside from shenanigans in the infrastructure of the Greek gambling sector, there have been numerous allegations that Kokkalis with his links to government, OPAP, the Hellenic Football Federation and, by proximity, the refereeing committee has been actively corrupting the game of football, particularly in favour of Olympiacos. Historically in Greece, as in numerous other south European countries, there is a significant positive correlation between the political party in power and the choice of football league champions. Despite losing power immediately prior to the 2004 Olympics, PASOK have maintained influence in the footballing sphere entirely due to the power web operated by Kokkalis. Footballing fans are both used to and accepting of these biases in favour of the two leading football teams.
Kokkalis also has a bit of history, not all of it the fabrications of Néa Dhimokratía. The PASOK government of 2002 under, it must be said, extensive pressure from the centre-right, charged Kokkalis with "with four felonies and two misdemeanors, including espionage against Greece; money laundering (through off-shore companies); defrauding investors in his Intracom telecom company; bribing government officials; and receiving criminal proceeds in the form of ‘gifts.’” A very strange type of Socialist, indeed...
Yesterday's victory for Karamanlis and his similarly mistitled New Democrats is a political travesty. To complete a day of Hellenic political misery, the LAOS nationalists entered parliament, the first time a far-right party has been represented in Athens in over a quarter of a century. The populace eventually decided that the Thatcherite agenda, and the facing down of the education unions certainly shared similarities to early 80's Britain, which is enriching the establishment while creating a clear economic divide between the middle and working classes is preferable. And this despite the mismanagement and, some would say, culpability in the the recent forest fires around Athens that have resulted in over sixty deaths - the government, property developers and the construction companies move as one in Greece. In a country which invented Pyrrhic victories, as more and more leaks occur in the coming months regarding these alleged corruptions, Karamanlis' lack of a proper mandate will be his undoing.
Greek political society also shows its links to football in their coordinated reaction to major societal events. There have been three occurrences of the entire football league programme shutting down in the last six months. The first followed the riot and a killing prior to an Olympiacos versus Panathinaikos women's volleyball match. The second was the cancellation of the opening round of matches in the 2007/08 Hellenic Super League due to the forest fire deaths. And, the third was so that the Greeks could elect which wing of the dictatorship will retain power for the short to medium term future. To date, two of the three opening weeks of the season have been cancelled with the result that Olympiacos go into their Champions League game against Lazio tomorrow with only one competitive game. That game was, however, away to the Shamrocks and you can be assured the Red And Whites were match fit for that particular encounter.
The Greeks invented everything worth inventing apart from the fleugelhorn and the football - the Greeks were doing Plato while England was still run by the Celts. They even invented democracy. The fact that the very tenets of democracy are being undermined in Greece by a monopolistic neo-liberal and/or criminalised elite bestows upon the Greek nation a government not worthy of their vast and shared political intellect. These illusions of democracy are parallelled in football where illiberal decisions, often made in the very same rooms as the political ones, determine realities.
The Olympics and the Euro 2004 triumph showed a new vibrant self confident Greek populace to the world. It is a pity that such people are not allowed democratic political representation.
But, then again, who is?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
