Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis seemed to be heading serenely towards re-election on Sept. 16 until last week, when fires tore through forests, killing more then 60 people and throwing his government's reflexes into question.
Greece was plunged into a national disaster as villages were consumed by fires that moved faster than a car and people were burned to death as they attempted to escape.
Distraught villagers who had seen relatives killed and their livelihoods reduced to ashes asked where the firefighters were when the flames engulfed their communities.
"They knew the fire had been coming for two days, and yet they did not send forces to guard Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympics and a global heritage site," said a guard at the Olympia Archaeological Museum.
"If that's not incompetence, then what is it?" he asked.
Karamanlis' conservative government confirmed that a general election scheduled for Sept. 16 would go ahead, but the opposition Socialists (PASOK) scented blood over the handling of the fires.
PASOK leader George Papandreou has accused the government of being ill-prepared for the ferocity of the flames which tore through forested areas parched by two months of intense heat.
"We have to tell our children the truth," Papandreou said. "Our country has suffered the biggest catastrophe since the war and there are no excuses."
In a matter of days, the lead of Karamanlis and his New Democracy (ND) party in the opinion polls looked shaky.
From a two-point advantage over the Socialists before the fires, the lead reduced to between 0.3 percent and 1.6 percent, according to four polls published on Thursday.
"People are angry. The authorities do not seem to have given the fires the attention they deserved and there are bound to be repercussions for the election," political analyst George Sefertzis said.
"PASOK has obviously increased its chances of winning, but the question is whether the dissatisfaction with Karamanlis will translate into votes for the Socialists or just increase the number of abstentions," he said.
The government quickly blamed arsonists for the fires, and the minister of public order went a step further, arguing that Greece was facing an "asymmetric threat," a term usually reserved for guerrillas and suicide bombers.
The previous day, Karamanlis himself had noted in a televised address: "So many fires, at the same time, in so many areas of the country cannot be a coincidence."
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take action against the EU if it moves forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act; I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal “laughable.” “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said. Von der Leyen made the proposal
SECRET FOOTAGE: A 17-year-old girl told British broadcaster Channel 4 that she had been approached by a man who covertly recorded her and their interaction Calls are growing louder in Europe for action against “pervert” smart glasses after secretly filmed footage of girls and women appeared online — with a petition in Britain demanding a ban on their sale. Anyone wearing smart glasses can take photos, film videos, listen to music, make phone calls, translate text or interact with an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, with sales now hitting millions. The devices grabbed attention this summer after a marketing tie-up between Kylie Jenner, beauty mogul and member of the Kardashian dynasty, and tech giant Meta. Since smartphones are now embedded in daily life, “big tech” is
FROSTY RECEPTION: ‘I conveyed the strong view of the Irish people that the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted,’ the Irish president said US President Donald Trump on Saturday said that he would “love to see” a united Ireland, wading into a politically sensitive subject as he embarked on a two-day Irish visit that blurs the lines between his presidency and personal business interests. After meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin, Trump said reunification of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — split for more than a century — would be “a fantastic thing.” “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now,” he told reporters, adding that “the UK will have something to say about it, obviously.”
North Korea yesterday fired multiple ballistic missiles, Seoul said, a day after South Korea concluded five days of joint maritime drills with the US and Japan that were focused on the North. Pyongyang last month slammed plans for the so-called Freedom Edge joint exercises in international waters off South Korea as a “threat” to North Korea and other countries of the region. Yesterday, Seoul’s military detected “multiple short-range ballistic missiles launched from the Wonsan area toward the East Sea [the Sea of Japan],” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The missiles were detected at about
RSS