Vouliwatch: the watchdog battling to demystify Greek democracy
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Its global reputation may be as the birthplace of democracy but standards in modern Greek politics are slipping, critics say, due to lax lawmaking and arcane parliamentary procedure on top of rambling speeches and even sexism.
Two former prime ministers have weighed in with their concerns in past weeks, with one, the leftist Alexis Tsipras, suggesting the political establishment was “part of the problem” rather than the solution.
“The trust and participation of citizens is the foundation of democracy. (Without it), no democracy can stand,” thundered the other, conservative Kostas Karamanlis.
Trying to save Greek citizens’ faith in democracy, however, is Vouliwatch, an independent watchdog which aims to cut through the hot air and shed light on the confusion for the public at large.
The group – named after the Greek for parliament, “vouli” – was set up in 2014 at the height of Greece’s economic crisis, which its co-founder and director Stefanos Loukopoulos said was just as much a political crisis.
“People felt their voice wasn’t being heard, that they lacked representation,” the 42-year-old political scientist told AFP.
“This resulted in a delegitimisation of central democratic institutions.”
With a small team of seven, including lawyers and a veteran parliamentary reporter, the non-profit site has won plaudits for its work to make the 300-seat parliament’s daily activities more understandable.
It unpicks and analyses raw data, repackaging it in more user-friendly formats, in contrast to the cumbersome, labyrinthine official Greek parliament website.
It gives run-downs of every law passed, alongside lawmakers’ CVs, asset declarations and voting records.
Users can also send questions directly to their elected representatives.
Greek ombudsman Andreas Pottakis told AFP the platform, which has run so far mainly on European grants, was “a truly valuable tool for a modern, liberal parliamentary democracy”.
Legal scholar and human rights expert Roxani Fragkou praised it for promoting “understanding of the political process among broader social groups”.
It also helps push “a culture of informed public dialogue in an era where misinformation and polarisation threaten meaningful democratic participation”, she added.
But Loukopoulos said foreign aid cuts made its future “uncertain”.
Public image
Vouliwatch’s motto is “strengthening democracy” but Loukopoulos said many do not see it that way in the former 19th-century royal palace in Athens that Greeks call the “Temple of Democracy”.
One head of parliament once told him that their work “was not helping parliament’s public image”, he said.
In a March poll, only 17 percent of Greeks said they trusted the legislature – down a point on 2024.
Parliament’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Loukopoulos said nepotism, clientelism and lack of transparency were characteristics of modern Greek politics, which has been dominated in the last 50 years by the prominent Karamanlis, Papandreou and Mitsotakis families.
Lawmakers try to keep up with EU-mandated regulations, including on transparency, but their heart is not really in it, he argued.
“They will legislate, but they will not implement (the resulting laws) properly… they don’t believe in them. They do it because they have to,” Loukopoulos said.
Vouliwatch’s breakthrough came in 2015, when it unilaterally published lawmakers’ asset declarations.
Until then, the records were published in poorly scanned handwritten documents, with smudges, arrows and cryptic notes.
“It was impossible to make sense of them,” Loukopoulos said.
In 2019, the site took the unprecedented step of suing parliament to gain access to documents showing misuse of funds by political parties.
From the documents, it emerged that the conservative New Democracy party had spent almost a million euros in state research grants on servicing party debts in 2016 and 2017, in violation of relevant regulations.
But a parliamentary committee failed to sanction the party.
Gerasimos Livitsanos, who has covered Greek parliamentary affairs since 1994 and now contributes to Vouliwatch, is convinced that the site is needed now more than ever.
Not only have standards slipped, he said, but things are going “from bad to worse”.
Source: AFP
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
