The Greek prime minister has vowed to upgrade the country’s railways as his embattled government braces for a vote of no confidence after huge protests over a 2023 train crash that killed 57 people.
Two days after hundreds of thousands took to the streets in fury over the response to the disaster on its second anniversary, Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged that not enough had been done to build a “safe and modern” transport system, saying the largest protests in recent history had emphasised the demand for action.
The collision occurred on the Athens-Thessaloniki line when an intercity train crammed with students hit a freight train head-on in the gorge of Tempe.
“Our infrastructure must be modernised and made safe, because what has been done in recent years is simply not enough,” Mitsotakis said in a weekly online address, dedicated solely to the disaster that as well as the 57 mostly young dead left scores injured on the night of 28 February 2023.
“The citizens – both those who marched in protest and those who grieved in silence – demanded the obvious: truth and justice for the victims, a state that takes action to ensure such a tragedy is never repeated [and] safe and modern public transport that the country deserves.”
Change, he vowed, would begin with the Athens-Thessaloniki line where the locomotives had careered towards each other at high speed along the same track.
The scale of Friday’s protests, with more than 300 held in Greece and abroad, have proved beyond doubt that Mitsotakis is facing his biggest test since being elected in July 2019.
Critics accuse him of putting the needs of his fractious New Democracy party before public outrage in what is seen as a rare miscalculation by a politician who has prided himself on his ability to handle crises.
“Confidence in his ability to deliver is evaporating,” said the prominent political analyst Maria Karaklioumi. “This is the first time that this government has confronted such huge opposition from society at large. People are extremely despondent. It’s no longer simply about the train crash but a much broader political crisis.”
Two years on, no official or state body have been held accountable for the tragedy and the glacial pace of Greek justice means a trial has yet to take place.
Anger has been further fuelled by the sense of a cover-up, aggravated by Greece’s air and rail accident authority releasing a 178-page report on the eve of the protests revealing “traces” of an unknown and highly flammable substance at the scene of the crash – increasing suspicions that the freight train was smuggling explosive illegal chemicals.
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The report highlighted the lack of “respect and order” shown by officials in electing to clean up the accident site which had, they said, “led to loss of evidence”.
Judicial investigators are expected to call new witnesses to testify this week amid mounting concerns that key evidence was deliberately concealed.
On Sunday Mitsotakis accepted that the report’s findings had exposed a situation “far from what we aspire to” and appealed to Greeks to not lose faith in the judiciary.
“In a state governed by the rule of law, only the judiciary has the responsibility, authority, and ability to bring clarity to a case that has caused us so much pain – not political parties, nor public opinion,” he wrote.
But with polls showing the overwhelming majority of Greeks no longer have any trust in public institutions or the judicial system, opposition parties are determined to keep up the pressure. The main opposition Pasok party has signalled it will file a vote of no confidence on Wednesday that is expected to trigger days of fiery debate in parliament, while protesters continue to hold vigils in honour of the dead outside.
Article by:Source: Helena Smith in Athens
