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

Amid the solemnity of Holy Week, as Bright Day approaches, the Easter of the Orthodox, the tug of war among the parties for dominance in the announced elections of 06.05.2012 intensifies.

The cries of pessimism about the economy grow louder, and the threats of strikes and demands by organized interests escalate, with the blessing of left-leaning parties.

Society is in a state of agitation that removes reason and intensifies excesses and extremisms, from which the extremists are strengthened, with their complex-ridden Balkan mentality that cannot see beyond its own nose.

Suddenly, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, we learned of the arrest of the former minister of national defense, former minister of development, the once all-powerful figure of PASOK rule, the former successor of the leader of the green plague.

This sudden, slow-burning arrest of the aged thief, one of the armies of rabid predators trained by the son of the old man of democracy, imitated the other foolish arrest of the abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery, which the luminaries of judicial power chose to carry out on Christmas Eve.

With wonder we observe that the judicial rulers, competing with their counterparts in the other powers that supposedly derive from the people, respect neither the traditions nor the sacred things of the historic country they have set themselves to uproot.

The competent persons who staff the judicial power, which we inaccurately call justice, choose these highest religious and national holidays in order to hunt selectively some, not necessarily the chief perpetrators, of the felonies that indelibly disgraced all of us together with the suffering country and its history.

There is no one to explain to us why investigating judges, prosecutors, and the others of the judicial guild choose Christmas and Easter to order the imprisonments so dear to them, another incomprehensible thing happening in our country.

And what is the meaning of depriving of liberty a sick abbot with international visibility and an overaged and weakened ruler-politician, respectively on Christmas Eve and on the eve of Easter?

It seems that the mania against traditions, mainly religious traditions, blind fanaticism against the Church and its institutions, and the unrestrained materialism that has conquered our country have performed their miracle.

Instead of celebrating the miracle of Christ's Birth and the miracle of His Resurrection, we celebrate the resurrection from the dead of judicial power, which finally deigned to awaken and, interrupting its deep sleep, began foolish imprisonments for the sake of being seen by people.

In other words, we are living through staged situations and theatrical performances with arrests ordered by the various stern and unyielding investigating judges and prosecutors.

Instead of fighting true crime and instead of seeking immediate coverage of the losses caused by the various stallions of power, the so-called political fraudsters, even during Holy Week of devotion and reflection they imprisoned the former minister of the green storm, leaving untouched the well-known usurers, the destroyers of the economy and of the social fabric itself, to play tennis in Politia of Kifisia and in Ekali or to create new parties, whistling indifferently, as the wise people would say.

We watch the armies of newly rich fraudsters setting the tone in social life. They provoke with lives full of luxury and hardness. They pretend to be reformers and revolutionaries, without the Javerts of judicial power intervening. These figures exhaust their severity either on political corpses like the former minister of PASOK rule, or on weak and unprotected people, foreigners and locals, who lack the power to react.

It has now become a conviction that all these things are staged, done in order to mislead and disorient.

They are carried out so that it may appear that judicial power supposedly fulfills its mission. For this purpose even trials of the Aexoni type are set up, under the pretext that the property of the plundered public sector was endangered.

Imprisonments, incarceration, deprivation of political rights, and monetary penalties are imposed on supposed criminals. Irrelevant and innocent people are prosecuted and imprisoned without shame, while basic principles of law, civilization, and humanism are flagrantly trampled.

Major drug traffickers escape, while sick people, addicts, intellectually delayed persons, mentally disturbed persons, age-immature persons, minors, refugees without protectors, persecuted and unfortunate people, women about to give birth and mothers with their newborns, dying people, and those who labor hard for their daily bread take the road to prison or remain imprisoned so that they may understand that they should not have been born.

And these things happen in Orthodox Greece, honored by poets and artists, by enemies and friends...

Why do all these things happen? I will wonder and ask myself until I receive an answer from someone with honor and moral character.

I hope Christmas and Easter of 2013 will not come without this year's Easter questions being answered.

Although I should not wonder, because I know human nature and its cruelty, the capacity of many to transform like chameleons when they lose spirituality, faith, principles, and attach themselves to matter. Matter from which Christ, who will rise in order to raise us if we so wish, sought to detach us through His sacrifice, without our wondering and being troubled by arrests and theatrical performances during Holy Week, on the eve of the Resurrection...

Emmanouil Papadakis