The huge outpouring of public rage (with the participation of tens of thousands of citizens in demonstrations in Athens, cities around the country and diaspora Greeks on 25 January) over an alleged cover-up of the evidence regarding the disastrous Tempi train crash (28 February, 2023) that claimed the lives of 57 young people, mostly university students, has shaken the government to its foundations.
The government’s main line of defense has been that opposition parties are instrumentalising the disaster for petty partisan gain and that protesters are merely pawns of the left-wing opposition party SYRIZA.
It has insisted that only the notoriously slow-moving Greek judiciary can decide on the facts of the case and and on a potential cover-up, and that the sole motive of enraged citizens is to topple PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Evidence points to cover-up, for ‘squeaky clean’ crash site
The first, glaring indication of a possible cover-up was the apparent order of the then minister-to-the-prime minister, Christos Triantopoulos, who was charged with coordinating the operation, that a crucial section of the crash site as regards evidence be covered with earth and rubble, significantly impeding any full investigation of the causes of the crash.
Triantopoulos denies he gave the order.
However, veteran police reporter Vasilis Lambropoulos (Ta Nea and To Vima), in an investigative report published this week, brought to light crucial written documents of the testimony of local fire service officers and policemen who said that they were flabbergasted that just three days after the crash the scene had been completely covered over with earth and rubble.
Police officers’ meetings with ‘political figures’
In separate depositions, police officers, according to the report, said they met with as yet unnamed “political figures” who ordered that “by Sunday everything should be squeaky clean” at the site of the crash.
If so, the looming question is whether, in the greatest and deadliest train crash in Greek history, Triantopoulos could have taken such a crucial and perplexing initiative without the PM’s approval.
Tampering with audio evidence, scapegoating train employees
From the start, the government has attributed the crash to the “human error” of Larissa (where the Intercity passenger train commenced its deadly course) station chief Vasilis Samaras and the driver of the Thessaloniki-bound passenger train, Yorgos Koutsoumbas.
Yet, that would be hard or impossible to prove, as in another indication of a possible cover-up, the crucial 11-minute audio recording of communications between the departure of the passenger train from Larissa and the moment of the crash has disappeared. That includes the communication between Samaras and the station chief of the Neon Poron station, Eleni Zarkado, who announced the southward-bound departure of the commercial train from her station.
It is unclear who either tampered with the audio or decided to stop recording in the intervening period.
The competent appellate court investigating magistrate, Sotiris Baikamis, issued an order barring the technical expert hired by Koutsoumbas’s family from access to the audio evidence, on the grounds that his appointed expert had delivered his report already. And that was that.
Government attacks on victims’ relatives
Ministers and top ruling New Democracy cadres have blasted the relatives of the victims who are demanding transparency, focusing on the president of the Association of Tempi Victims’ Families, Maria Karystianou, a pediatrician whose 20-year old daughter Marthi died in the crash.
Some ND members have even gone as far as to accuse her of using the disaster in which her child was killed to build a political career.
Karystianou blasts government in speech to European Parliament
Karystianou addressed the European Parliament on 3 April, 2024, underlining the chronic ills of Greek political system.
She stressed that it inconceivable that electronic systems (which had been bought but never installed) were not in place to avert the crash of two trains running on the same track in opposite directions (a commercial train running from Thessaloniki southbound and an Intercity passenger train en route to the northern port city on the same track for 12 minutes, without attracting the attention of anyone.
ND cadres accused Karystianou of embarrassing Greece internationally with falsehoods.
Overall lack of accountability, from phone tapping to Tempi
Citizens are outraged by the total lack accountability two years later of the competent politicians – then transport minister Costas Karamanlis (who resigned immediately after the crash but then was re-elected to Parliament on New Democracy’s ticket) and the then competent Minister to the Prime Minister Christos Triantopoulos.
This has set in motion a chain reaction of political developments, from the government’s recent agreement to opposition calls for the creation of a preliminary criminal parliamentary inquiry committee (in which ruling New Democracy naturally has a majority) regarding the actions of the competent Minister Triantopoulos (who issued an unprecedented announcement of his conditional resign in the future) and intense bickering between main opposition centre-left PASOK and left-wing SYRIZA.
The public consensus is that the New Democracy government has displayed a total lack of accountability on a variety of crucial issues, most notably the phone tapping of its own ministers, top military officials, and journalists, with the involvement of the National Intelligence Service (EYP), which was under the purview of Mitsotakis’s s nephew, Grigoris Dimitriadis. who worked out of the PM’s Maximos Mansion offices. Dimitriadis was sacked but there were no other repercussions.
Consequently, it may be reasonably argued that the volcanic eruption of public rage over the apparent Tempi cover-up, although based mainly by the disaster, was also grounded on the popular belief that governmental hubris has resulted in a total lack of transparency and accountability in affairs that have shaped the public’s view of the ruling party.
That includes the fact that in an initial parliamentary inquiry into the Tempi disaster, key witnesses were blocked from testifying by the ND majority on the committee.
In an interview straight on the heels of the huge 25 January nationwide demonstrations, Mitsotakis conceded that the committee’s handling of the affair was not a “good moment for Parliament”.
Tempi: Rift between Left-wing parties
If the agreement of SYRIZA and its more leftist splinter party Nea Aristera (New Left) on the nomination of former PASOK minister and current SYRIZA cadre Louka Katseli engendered hopes of the two parties joining forces – at least on support for parliamentary questions and draft legislation – the disagreement on how Parliament should handle the disaster scuppered them.
SYRIZA wanted to immediately table in Parliament a no-confidence motion, while PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis wanted to await still pending expert reports, one drafted by Athens Polytechnic.
The parties eventually agreed to proceed with the inquiry against Triantopoulos, while SYRIZA leader Socratis Famellos has announced that motions for new inquiries may well be tabled in the future, potentially upgrading the current misdemeanor charges to felonies.
