Yannis Papayanakis, a firefighter from the Thessaloniki Rescue Corps, was sleeping peacefully when he received the call from his superior informing him that he had to leave immediately, along with Hektoras, the brigade’s dog, to join a rescue operation in the Larissa area. , on the railway linking Athens to Thessaloniki. That morning a passenger train and a commercial convoy had collided head-on. He brutal sinister It left 57 dead, 37 of them aged between 15 and 35 years.
During the hour that the road trip to the accident site lasted, Yannis was assuming what awaited him 5 kilometers from the Tempe station: «I knew that what I was going to find would be hard, but I did not imagine so much. The smell of charred human flesh was so great that the dog could not focus to find survivors, “he tells ABC. He worked for more than 15 hours straight collecting human remains from the iron mass of the convoys so that at least the relatives of the dead could recover what was left of their loved ones.
Three days later, the rescue efforts focused on the dining car. And Panayotis Veis, a firefighter from Lárisa, participated in them. «We got rescue 16 bodies from among the remains of the charred wagon. They were in such a state that it was impossible to tell if they were men or women. It was one of the most difficult situations of my career, ”Veis explains to this newspaper.
shock and chaos
After the initial shock, chaos broke out: data that was arriving by drops, relatives tried by all means to get news of their loved ones (Hellenic Train, manager of the trains, did not even know the exact number of passengers) and the growing sensation that this tragedy was the result of gross negligence. For the anger to spread among the Greek population was a matter of hours.
The morning after the accident and after visiting the place, Constantinos A. Karamanlís, Minister of Infrastructure and Transport of Greece, presented his resignation “out of respect for the victims.” Days after leaving the portfolio, he announced his candidacy as deputy in the next legislative elections that, although they have not yet been officially called, will be held in May. According to a survey carried out by GPO, 64.6% of those interviewed positioned themselves against his candidacy. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (New Democracy), in a television interview, stated that “when the time comes, I will speak with Karamanlís and we will discuss whether or not he will be on the lists.”
Mitsotakis himself, hours after the accident and without the investigations having even begun, declared that it had been the result of human error. Many Greeks jumped like a spring and harshly criticized his words through social networks, considering that the head of government was trying to hide the true causes of the fateful event. Although days later he apologized and acknowledged that it was a multifactorial error, the indignation was already unstoppable. The culmination was the visit of the President of the Hellenic Republic to ground zero: a gesture in tribute to the victims. Katerina Sakellaropoulou threw bouquets of flowers through the windows of the charred carriages, where the lifeless bodies of the victims had not yet been recovered. More anger.
Since then, the demonstrations and strikes have not stopped throughout the country, causing numerous altercations between some protesters and the Police. A week ago, the head of the Corps was dismissed after a police crane violently targeted several protesters in the center of Athens.
According to a study carried out by Public Issue, 2.5 million Greeks have participated in the protests over the train accident in Tempe, something unprecedented since the start of the financial crisis 12 years ago.
Despite the fact that all the alerts are activated in the New Democracy party, communication errors have not stopped happening: a week ago, Mitsotakis, at an event organized in a northern suburb of Athens, declared that “the sacrifice of young people , it will not be in vain»; Hours later, in a political news program, Ádonis Georgiadis, Minister of Investments, said that the accident was “an opportunity” to change the country. According to the latest polls, in the almost four weeks after the accident, New Democracy has reduced the lead that separates it from the radical left formation Syriza from 7.5 points to 4. The Greeks look closely at every gesture and every intervention of their rulers, who try to reverse citizen anger for electoral benefit.
match duel
Over the past week, the two major Greek parties, New Democracy and Syriza, have held a tug of war in order to prove that the degradation of the rail network’s security systems was the result of the other’s management. A few days ago, the leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, visited the telematic control center of the Lárisa station, in operation until 2019 and now completely abandoned. In response, the Deputy Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Mijalis Papadópulos, visited the local remote control room (which shows the movement of trains a few kilometers after leaving the station). Every day, from both fronts, testimonies, photographs, documents are provided to try to dismantle the arguments of the other party.
Young people have become the engine of citizen movements in recent weeks: “We had not seen a youth movement like the current one for years,” Serafín Seferiadis, professor of Political Science at Athens’ Pantion University, told ABC, who believes that an accident like the one that occurred has made them “change the way they see the world.”
For Nikos Marantzidis, a political scientist and professor at the Macedonian University of Thessaloniki, “it has been the straw that broke the camel’s back. During these four years, the conservative Executive has created an image of the prime minister as a technocrat who is not brought down by the scandal of wiretapping (carried out on politicians and journalists by the Greek secret services), which in any other democracy would have caused the immediate fall of the government. In addition, he has based his communication policy on conveying that the government management was supported by the European partners. And he boasted, on the one hand, that during his mandate the citizens did not protest in the streets and, on the other, that he had reinforced the security of the country with security understood as massive riot control contracts, “adds Marantzidis.
“We had not seen a youth movement like the current one for years,” Serafín Seferiadis, professor of Political Science at the Pantion University of Athens, told ABC.
But overnight, Mitsotakis’s dream was dashed: “The current political situation is completely different from what it was a month ago. All the citizen dissatisfaction accumulated by the unfortunate management of the pandemic, the economic insecurity after the labor reform and the great fires of 2021 has also suddenly fallen on their shoulders, “says Seferiadis.
Both experts are of the opinion that it is still early to know what may happen in the next elections. Seferiadis believes that the elections should not be delayed because “the flame of rage It has created a citizen movement that is essential for political change, so necessary in the health of liberal democracies. Marantzidis, for his part, believes that everything will depend on the efforts made by the political parties to “channel public anger and turn it into an electoral advantage.” In the case of New Democracy, according to the political scientist, it is difficult for it to gain the trust of the youth and it is most likely that it will focus on its traditional electorate, the elderly and retirees, reinforcing communication on television, “the favorite medium of their voters for information. And this seems to be the line that Mitsotakis will follow so that the Lárisa tragedy does not dislodge him from power.
