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Comrade Koulouris and the "Do You Know Who I Am?" Era

On Saturday evening Kimon Koulouris, a former “Socialist” Minister of PASOK who is often mocked by the Greek media for his eye make up, which includes tons of mascara and eyeliner, was driving his car on Vouliagmenis Avenue, one of the busiest avenues in Athens, and repeatedly speeding through red lights. Four police officers of the DIAS motorcycle team stopped him and asked for his personal data. Koulouris refused to take an alcohol test and swore at them. But he didn’t stop there; the 71-year old former minister injured (!) a 25 year old policeman as he tried to escape in his luxurious mercedes. Earlier on Monday, a senior police unionist claimed that his superiors had intervened in order to quickly resolve a dispute between police and Koulouris on Saturday night.
While Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis met on Monday with the four officers and defended them, noting that “all citizens are equal before the law,” the truth of the matter is that in Greece, the birthplace of democracy, citizens are not equal before the law. Politicians are above the law. For the past thirty five years the Greek political landscape has been plagued with vested interests, endemic kleptocracy and bribery. Since the days of Andreas Papandreou – with whom Kimon Koulouris had close connections, Greek politics have been predicated on the expansion of the public sector and patronage.
For old school Greek politicians like Koulouris, being stopped by police officers – the same people who used to be his “rousfetia”/clients is… unthinkable. During his peak of power as a Minister, Koulouris was a guru in clientelism and kept collecting votes by using his best bargaining chip: state jobs. He and his PASOK comrades kept hiring people in the already bloated “public sector paradise” where workers’ duties mainly consisted of returning political favors and playing the role of yes-men and awed admirers to the politicians who hired them.
For Koulouris and all others like Koulouris, the era of ‘Do you know who I am?’ is still not over. His reaction is an accurate reflection of how the Greek political elite is struggling to keep its nerve, under enormous pressure for change, as Greeks are no longer willing to sit around and tolerate this kind of arrogance. No one cares who Mr. Koulouris is anymore. The party is over for Mr. Koulouris and his cronies, one of the only positive changes Greece’s financial tragedy has brought to the country.

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