There comes a point when a scandal is no longer a scandal; it becomes the operating system of a government. Greece under Kyriakos Mitsotakis appears to have crossed that line long ago. The latest revelations surrounding agricultural subsidies and the conveniently “enhanced” academic credentials of Deputy Minister Makarios Lazarides are not shocking. They are not even surprising. They are, instead, painfully predictable.
Because what we are witnessing is not a series of unfortunate incidents. It is a pattern. A culture. A method of governance.
The agricultural subsidies scandal alone should be enough to shake any functioning democracy to its core. Funds meant to support farmers; real people struggling against rising costs, climate pressures, and market instability, are once again tangled in a web of questionable allocations and opaque decision-making. This is not just bureaucratic incompetence. It reeks of calculated misuse. And when public money is treated like a private reserve for political allies, the damage is not merely financial; it is moral.
Then there is the Nixonian tapping of opposition and journalists’ telephones. Again, in any democratic state with an active and functioning rule of law, Kyriakos Mitsotakis government should have resigned. Yet nothing happened.
And now we have the farcical element, the fake degrees. Because of course there are fake degrees. In a system where appearance often trumps substance, credentials become decorative accessories rather than proof of merit. Lazarides’ academic background, now under scrutiny, fits neatly into a broader narrative in which qualifications are inflated, histories are polished, and reality is adjusted to suit political convenience. It would be laughable if it weren’t so corrosive.
But the real issue is not Lazarides. Again, he is a symptom. The disease lies further up.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis has cultivated an image of technocratic efficiency and reformist zeal. Yet scandal after scandal chips away at that carefully constructed façade. Surveillance scandals, media manipulation allegations, public procurement controversies, and now this. Each one is dismissed, deflected, or buried under the weight of controlled narratives and short public memory cycles. It is governance by exhaustion: overwhelm the public with so many controversies that outrage itself becomes unsustainable.
And here lies the bitter irony. The only scandal one might argue this government has not been directly linked to is something as globally notorious as the Epstein case and even that feels less like reassurance and more like ...coincidence. When trust erodes to this extent, absence of evidence is no longer comforting. It simply becomes another question mark.
This is what systemic corruption looks like, not necessarily envelopes of cash exchanged in dark rooms but a steady normalisation of blurred lines. Where accountability is selective, transparency is performative and responsibility is always someone else’s problem. It is a slow decay, dressed up as stability.
Supporters will argue that every government faces scandals. That mistakes happen. That the opposition would be no better. But this is not about isolated mistakes. It is about repetition without consequence. About a political ecosystem where exposure does not lead to resignation, investigation does not lead to justice, and outrage does not lead to change.
I have often written it, but I feel forced to repeat myself, the danger is not just what is happening, but what people are starting to accept as normal.
Because when fake degrees are shrugged off, when public funds are quietly redirected, when political figures remain untouched despite mounting evidence, democracy does not collapse dramatically. It erodes quietly. Gradually. Until one day, the line between governance and impunity disappears altogether.
And perhaps that is the most troubling scandal of all: not what this government has done, but what it has convinced the public to tolerate.
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