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The wiretapping scandal in Greece could affect the 2023 elections

2022-12-16 20:03:49Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
The wiretapping scandal in Greece could affect the 2023 elections
Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis

The list with the names of the people intercepted, allegedly by the Greek state, is getting longer and longer. The reaction of the opinion is missing. It remains to be seen how this scandal can affect the elections in 2023.

"They found three broken chairs and a broken table," Kostas Vaxevanis, editor-in-chief of Documento, a newspaper critical of the government, says with a laugh. And he cannot hide a slight cynical tone. Although there were clear doubts, the prosecution itself has now acted and checked the offices in Athens of the Israeli firm Intellexa. This venture that distributes the illegal Predator surveillance software has been in the headlines in Greece since the summer of 2022, when the software was found on the cellphones of journalists and politicians. "They staged this show nine months after the interceptions with the Intellexa-shaped program came to light. Of course they found nothing." For Vaxevanis, this is not surprising. No one in the state apparatus has any interest in seriously investigating the wiretapping scandal that is getting bigger and bigger.

After the first information about the illegal surveillance of the investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis and the chairman of the opposition party PASOKS by the secret service EYP with instructions from the prime minister's office, Vaxevanis and his investigative team have discovered other cases until the beginning of November. They published a list of 33 names, which have been monitored with the help of illegal eavesdropping software. Among them are former members of the government such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias or the Minister of Development Adonis Georgadis, but also the media magnate and ship manufacturer Evangelos Marinakis and the former conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

Meanwhile, Documento has expanded the list even further. Affected are parliamentarians, media owners, journalists, businessmen, as well as people from the circle of the eavesdropped. It is noticeable that we are not only dealing with internal and external party opponents of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, but also with his confidants. "It's about hundreds", Vaxevanis answered the question of how many were affected in total. He thinks that the government has gathered information about them, through which it can put pressure on the persons in question. For this reason, many of them do not want to express themselves officially, even though their mobile phones have been infected with predators.

Deliberate attacks on critics?

Although the scandal in Greece has become public, there is no major reaction. "The government is trying to create the impression among the people that it is not a serious issue," Vaxevanis told DW. Since three years, a communication team has been working in the so-called Maximou, the prime minister's headquarters, operating with "unclean and already known for a long time" methods. As soon as the investigations were made public, which highlighted serious violations by the government, news spread to draw attention to topics such as public safety or the ongoing dispute with neighboring Turkey.

In addition, there are attempts to publicly discredit journalists, says Vaxevanis: "Again, the government tries to create the impression that these revelations are an intrigue. When we discovered the Novartis scandal, they spread in the media that this is not a scandal but a badly done investigation by some journalist, coming from the opposition." Vaxevanis was involved in the publications of the Novartis scandal, from which incorrect agreements between high-level Greek politicians and the Swiss pharmaceutical concern emerged.

Concern in the outside world growing

The government denies allegations that it has ties to Predator. After the publication of the 33 names, government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said that this report does not provide evidence. However, the allegations must be properly investigated by the Greek authorities and by justice. Since then, Vaxevanis and other journalists have been waiting to report on the subject and are waiting in vain for answers.

The wiretapping scandal in the first place creates a bad feeling in the outside world. The international media, including the New York Times and the French newspaper Le Monde, have intensively reported on these developments. The Pega Commission of the European Parliament, which investigates the use of spy software within the EU, in a report clearly states that the Predator spy system is used in Greece to spy on citizens.

The ruling party is the biggest political force

Although the pressure on the Greek Prime Minister has increased significantly, his Nea Dimokratia party continues to be stable. According to polls at the end of November, after this scandal became public, it has not lost points in the electorate and remains the largest political force in the country with 30 percent. Dimitris Christopoulos, dean of political sciences at the Pantheon University of Athens, argues this with the fact that the population has to deal with the economic situation, and does not have the mind to worry about illegal spy software: "This is not the problem anymore great for people in Greece. I don't think much attention is paid to the wiretapping scandal in a country that has problems like here."

But this does not mean that the government has not suffered damage. "This government has lost the support it enjoyed until now in Europe and in the international arena. Mitsotakis cannot save his reputation," says Christopoulos.

The prime minister has weakened even within the ranks of his party, says the political scientist: "Until the summer, Mitsotakis and his team determined the political agenda." But New Democracy is resilient and can recover from this crisis. In order to achieve this, it can be considered that the party distances itself from Mitsotakisi. /DW


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