Bad luck

When Rena Dourou, the former SYRIZA regional governor, remarked, "I had a stroke of bad luck on my watch," following the deadly wildfire in eastern Attica in 2018, it elicited public outrage for a simple reason: not because there can't be instances of "bad luck" during a term as governor, but because such occurrences are inherently part of the risks politicians undertake when assuming crucial p

"It was an unfortunate moment," the stationmaster in the deadly train crash is said to have claimed. How many times has the inadequacy and failure of the broader Greek state mechanism been hidden behind such phrases? Sometimes it is blamed on "bad luck," at others, it is dismissed with "That's Greece."