For faith and country

By Pantelis Boukalas

Testifying to an Athens prosecutor will not suffice for Panayiotis Baltakos, now a regular citizen, to settle all of his scores. Provided, that is, that a leading party official such as himself can be relegated to the ranks of a regular citizen from one minute to the next, losing the prestige of his name and position that had so far opened plenty of doors for him and those close to him.

It goes without saying that if anyone else – a true regular citizen and son of yet another regular citizen, not to mention armed forces professional – had entered Parliament (hallowed ground and so on) and proceeded to insult and beat people up they would have already paid the price for their macho antics. They would certainly not have had the backing of ministers who suddenly discovered new sensibilities and an understanding for the filial sentiment, essentially vindicating their behavior. Nor would the fact that their thuggery was aimed at other thugs act as an alibi.

The former cabinet secretary, a “familiar, old problem,” as deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos belatedly acknowledged (the persuasiveness of the latter’s statements are inversely proportional to his increasingly narcissistic compulsiveness), and his heart-to-heart chat with defendant Ilias Kasidiaris, left him seriously exposed. He exposed himself to regular people, to saints, to God himself, if one considers as he himself insisted, that he was telling one lie after the next on purpose – sitting beneath his private collection of religious icons. According to Baltakos he overstepped the boundaries of religion in his effort to defend the homeland. Given a voice, those icons could tell a lot of stories.

Of course how much and how well this fan of...