I have set up a crowdsourcing platform to help citizens challenge the well-established, yet illegal, fakelaki system
Last week, Greece's parliament narrowly passed the pivotal austerity bill spuriously said to secure the country's next instalment of rescue funds and keep the economy's nose above water. Violent protests erupted across the capital as enraged citizens poured on to the streets to contest these merciless measures. Greek citizens have been brought to their knees and it is only natural that many are protesting against the consequences of austerity's implementation. But is that the only thing they are revolting against?
Such protests are the expression of an exasperated people's loss of control over their future. But most importantly, they are a cry for justice. At the core of this crisis lie decades of political mismanagement, clientelism and corruption that have crippled the economy and plagued the moral fibre of Greek society. Having corruption at the epicentre of this debacle has made us subject to the scrutinising eyes of the EU and the IMF, organs that are distrustful of our capabilities to carry out our debt obligations when we have a parallel black economy estimated in 2010 to be equal to 25% of our GDP.
This kleptocracy infiltrates many public services in the form of "fakelaki" or "little envelopes" stuffed with bribes. From securing a bed in a public hospital, to getting a driver's licence, ensuring a construction permit or making sure your tax collector overlooks your true net income, fakelaki remain the unchallenged norm. Yet if the people have accepted and even participated in such exchanges thus far, why is it that they come to defy it now? The crisis has given us the opportunity to examine accepted practices in retrospect, to investigate what went wrong and who is responsible for the situation we find ourselves in today.
I too was forced to pay a bribe when my 90-year-old grandfather, a proud war veteran diagnosed with terminal cancer, was disregarded for hours in a large public hospital's emergency room. Faced with lines such as "there's no bed you see" and "the doctor might not be able to see you" his undeniable right to medical help was bargained for a monetary reward. We ended up slipping the notorious fakelaki in the doctor's white coat; needless to say he was admitted into the operating room within an hour.
Feeling powerless in the face of an illegal system so well established, I felt the urgency for change and to give a voice to all those who had felt just as victimised as my grandfather. Hence, the birth of edosafakelaki.org, a crowdsourcing platform created to tackle corruption in Greece by harnessing the collective energy of its citizens. People can now report anonymously on the nature, value and location of corrupt transactions across the country. By reducing this complex social problem into comprehensible, public data we can identify the trends of this activity and use it to argue for increased accountability of public services.
John F Kennedy once said: "Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past but let us accept our own responsibility for the future." Similarly, the time is ripe for us Greeks to become active citizens, vociferous about our needs and instrumental in creating the future we demand. Technology has given us the tools to redefine democratic dialogue, learn from one another and engage in collective action. Some say that the problem can only be tackled from the top of the food chain downwards. I disagree. Pressure for change in a democracy can only come from the people. The time is now.
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