Until recently, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, appeared unassailable. He was the poster boy of the European centre-right: the politician who had kept opponents at bay while, elsewhere, populism had cannibalised mainstream conservatism; the technocrat who had ushered in an era of stability and reform after years of economic and social crisis.
Twenty months into his second term, a wave of protest over a train crash – on a scale not seen in decades – could not have been predicted. Nor, perhaps, could the cries of “resign!” that resonated from the crowd outside the Athens parliament on Friday as MPs filling its red-carpeted chamber inside called Mitsotakis a “danger to democracy” before a late-night vote of confidence in his government.
In a rare show of unity, four leftwing opposition parties had brought the motion, bonded by the conviction that the government had failed to accept responsibility for numerous rail safety failures identified by investigators. After three days of raucous debate, the ruling party’s majority ensured the vote went the prime minister’s way. But the charges of incompetence and chicanery, the sense of a cover-up underpinning the government’s handling of the disaster, will not be as easy to control.
A little after 11pm on 28 February 2023, 57 people, mostly students enrolled at university in Thessaloniki, died when their northbound train collided head-on with a southbound freight train in the Vale of Tempe. In the absence of automated safety controls, the trains had hurtled for miles along the same track before a ferocious collision. In the explosion that followed, at least seven victims were incinerated instantly, according to a 178-page report released by Greece’s air and rail accident authority on the eve of the second anniversary of the accident.
The “possible presence” at the crash site of highly inflammable chemicals – widely suspected to have been smuggled on to the freight train – was not ruled out. The remains of many victims were never found, heightening the grief that gripped the nation.
Days before the crash, Kostas Karamanlis, then the transport minister, had stood in parliament and berated the opposition for shamefully “raising issues of security” on the nation’s railways.
Last week it was his statement that students carried on placards held aloft outside parliament. “We’re here as the voice of all the dead,” said Marianna Papaconstantinou, 18, standing among the thousands who rallied outside the building earlier on Friday before an even bigger demonstration descended into running battles with police. “We’re here because we want justice for them, because people like Karamanlis told lies about the state of our railways. The cover-up is huge.”
A week earlier, hundreds of thousands of people had also gathered in Syntagma Square – and in dozens of cities in Greece and abroad. Described later as the greatest outpouring of dissent since the collapse of military rule, the demonstrations brought people of all ages and political persuasions together in an unprecedented outburst of public anger over the government’s handling of the crash.
Among them were once loyal supporters of Mitsotakis.
The disaster at Tempe touched a nerve partly because of the reverence Greeks have for the family. “We want vindication for these kids because they could have been ours too,” said a 59-year-old medic crossing himself at a makeshift shrine honouring the dead. “All these people inside that building, all those MPs, have to know that we are now united and we want the truth – and that has to start with the government explaining its haste in cleaning up the scene.”
Authorities had been ordered to remove debris from the accident site at considerable speed – a controversial move now said by experts to have “led to loss of evidence”.
Defending the decision during the debate, Mitsotakis said the fire service had recommended carriages be removed as part of the rescue operation. He accused the opposition of weaponising the tragedy in a “nihilistic coalition of the willing”.
But it is also clear that, for a politician often praised for his ability to handle crises, Mitsotakis had misread public outrage over the crash. With no official or state body having been held accountable for the tragedy, and a trial yet to take place, polls last week showed a vast majority wanting early elections – even if his New Democracy party is still well ahead of its rivals.
Two years on, anger over the crash has morphed into a much bigger crisis that no amount of government spin appears able to defuse. “The Tempe disaster embodies everything that makes [people] angry about this government,” wrote Alexis Papachelas, the editor-in-chief of the conservative newspaper Kathimerini, condemning “the arrogance stemming from the absence of a credible opponent, the lack of empathy, the mistaken belief that every transgression can be brushed away with PR stunts” in an editorial of rare rebuke.
Mitsotakis might still be seen as the only viable option for many voters but, Papachelas wrote, he was treading a very delicate path. “Faced with such anger and scepticism … the prime minister needs to ask himself some serious questions about his choices and about the expectations that brought him to power.”
