Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

Democracy rests on institutions, on the direct election by the people of parliament and government, on the separation of powers, decentralization and the control of authority.

Without the institutions of democracy, parliamentary government turns into the tyranny of the strong over the weak and of the few over the many. Then dissolution and chaos follow.

Our European partners found that democratic institutions are not respected in Greece, whose civilization has collapsed.

Representative of the Europeans' findings is an article in the German magazine Spiegel of 26.03.2012, titled collapsed civilization, in which the dissolution of Athens and the country is described.

Because of the wretched situation we created, our country cannot be compared with any other country, and Athens, especially its center, cannot be compared with any other European capital, the German magazine writes.

The author of the article, German journalist Julia Amalia Heyer, describes in that article, in the darkest colors, the miserable condition of the center of Athens and the persecutions launched by neo-fascists, as she points out, supporters of Golden Dawn against foreigners.

According to the article, the 25-year-old Afghan worker Massub, who has lived in Athens for the last five years and speaks Greek fluently, fears falling into the hands of supporters of Golden Dawn, the extreme party of the right that, according to the journalist, attracts the preferences of 4 percent of citizens. For that reason, he hides as soon as night begins to fall, hoping that he will soon be able to leave for Germany or France at the first opportunity.

In her article, the journalist does not fail to mention the flight not only of tourists from the center of Athens, especially from Patision Avenue, once the most famous and expensive area, where Maria Callas had also lived, but also of Athenians themselves, who have now become a minority. The flight, of course, began in the 1980s, but intensified together with the crisis.

In Omonia Square and the surrounding area, homeless foreigners are crowded into cardboard boxes, because the entire area of the center of Athens has been degraded as migrants who have nowhere else to settle gather there.

On central streets such as Panepistimiou, 300 meters from Syntagma Square and from Omonia, one can see young people, mostly Greeks, whose number is constantly increasing, injecting themselves without precautions, piercing every part of their bodies, even the most private parts.

Diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis are galloping, as is AIDS, which increased by 1250 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year, while the number of patients grows daily; at the Polyclinic on Sapfous Street alone it reaches 300 per day.

Julia Amalia Heyer particularly stresses the abuses suffered by migrants and, according to statistics kept by the 44-year-old dentist Nikitas Kanakis, who heads the organization Doctors of the World in Greece, he recorded 61 racist attacks against migrants from October until the end of January.

Elsewhere in the article, the activity of the 54-year-old leader of Golden Dawn, Nikos Michaloliakos, is noted; he participates in the municipal council of the municipality of Athens and has 10,000 members throughout Greece. Thanks to Golden Dawn, the area of Agios Panteleimon has been liberated, where his organization dominates.

The article mentions the dissolution of the state, the police and the institutions, the collapse of social cohesion, as well as citizens' initiatives organized for self-defense. It makes special reference to the Dublin II agreement and to the need for intervention by the European Union and the United Nations to solve the migration problem.

Under these wretched conditions, which tend to become insurmountable because of the inertia, incompetence and corruption of politicians, the people are called to elections before the completion of the lawful and constitutionally defined four-year term.

With the elections, however, the tragic condition of society will not improve. It will worsen, because those who are elected will come from the same pool. Incorruptible, capable, educated and honest people will not emerge; instead, the same people who, as government or opposition, managed to dissolve society and the country will prevail.

Responsibility does not belong only to those who exercised direct power by holding government and state posts. The opposition, both major and minor, bears equal responsibility, because it too gave the rhythm and tone of demolition, whether with incessant and foolish mobilizations that it baptized popular rather than party actions, or with provocative and blackmailing demands, occupations, endless strikes, road blockades, street battles, arsons and sabotage of every progressive effort, every radical proposal and every development move.

Both the rising left-wing parties and the declining right-wing parties will not manage to lead society into a clearing through their participation and prevalence in the elections.

From the elections will come new conflicts and infighting and a worsening of the already unbearable social situation so truthfully described in the above article.

The only thing that serves society and the people is understanding among the reasonable and the few uncorrupted persons left among politicians, so that the elections may be moved to the end of the four-year term, with the aim of allowing concord, social reconciliation, economic rebirth and, through the cooperation of the capable, the beginning of a light of hope toward an exit from the broad social, national, moral and political crisis.

We do not need elections while we are among the ruins of collapse. We need concord, cooperation and immediate, intelligent solutions, and afterwards let the elections come, when they will be welcome and useful.