In the May 2023 elections, just 2.5 months after the Tempi tragedy, New Democracy received 40.79% of the vote – and did not form a single-party government due to the simple proportional representation law voted by the SYRIZA-ANEL government. In the July elections of that year, with 40.5%, they elected 158 MPs and since then, they have ruled uninterruptedly, until the “Sunday of the rallies” for Tempe, which boosted the extreme Right and Left in the polls and triggered the reshuffle mechanisms.

The deadliest railway accident that occurred in our country had barely occupied the headlines pre-election, as was evident from the election result. It may be that in some villages, like Kastraki in Trikala, which counted three victims in the Tempi tragedy, New Democracy lost 11 points, dropping from 40.7% to 29.3%, but this was a drop in the ocean.

Only the choice of Mitsotakis to keep Kostas Ach. Karamanlis in the election ballots was criticized by the opposition parties, but his overwhelming re-election in the Serres constituency was seen as having “silenced all voices”.

However, the collective trauma of the tragedy had not healed: some of the victims’ relatives began to increasingly question the government’s narrative about the “fateful station master” who bore all the responsibility for the accident and began raising issues about the investigation into the case, beginning to speak of a “cover-up”.

The first issue raised was the infamous “dumping” of the accident site by government orders, a matter that was never given a clear answer: while those who were at the scene still say today that if the work had not been done, the cranes would not have been able to lift the wrecked wagons, the elected New Democracy regional governor of Thessaly, Kostas Agorastos, limited himself to saying that he followed orders and allocated resources and funds for graveling the tragedy site, an action that, according to some of the victims’ relatives, aimed to bury valuable evidence. Government officials involved in that process were also found to be unsuitable to give clear answers on the matter, resulting in the “dumping” still pending in the courts…

In response to the pressure for the establishment of a pre-investigative committee, the government led to the formation of an Investigative Committee, but the impression given by its work was that “it was not one of the best moments of the Parliament”, as Kyriakos Mitsotakis admitted in his interview with ALPHA, after the “Sunday of the rallies”.

The lack of clear answers from the government side fueled a series of conspiracy theories from experts who went as far as releasing a list of victims who supposedly did not die from the train collision but from a fire caused by flammable material illegally loaded onto the freight train, a claim that was rebutted by the victims’ relatives themselves.

However, the publication of some messages from the victims immediately after the tragedy was what created the “great anger” in Greek society in recent days. The “I can’t breathe,” which is heard from one of the victims in the desperate messages included in the case file, “tied” with the government’s inefficiencies – very little has been done for the railways since Tempe – but also with the direct accusations that government officials made against the victims’ relatives.

The government’s polling recovery, which resulted from two good months, December and January, with the prime minister’s commitments from the Budget speech and many more initiatives with a social focus, dissipated based on rolling surveys. New Democracy is returning to the tough environment of the fall, of course, maintaining a safe distance from the second PASOK, which is struggling to capitalize on the government’s wear and tear.

In contrast, according to the converging findings of several polls, the far-right party Greek Solution of Kyriakos Velopoulos, the far-left party Plefsi Eleftherias of Zoe Konstantopoulou, the MeRA25 party of Yanis Varoufakis, and the Voice of Reason party of Afroditi Latinopoulou are gaining, even though this party stayed away from the mobilizations and broadly from the Tempe issue.

The pressure environment that is emerging leads many to believe that Mr. Mitsotakis will not stop at the actions he already made with his interview with ALPHA. The Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias, has already hinted that the prime minister “will take heads” if it is found that some did not do their job properly.

The reshuffle
Mr. Mitsotakis sent a clear message to his ministers at the cabinet meeting: citizens demand work and efficiency, and there is no longer the luxury of time to implement central government goals. If something had to be done within a year, now it must be done within months. And it is obvious that the prime minister was not satisfied, especially at the beginning of the week, when very few government officials were on the panels to carry the communication battle. An image that changed after the middle of the week, when he took the matter into his own hands, resulting in several government officials stepping forward.

The scenario of splitting the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport in the near future is on the table, aiming for a particular focus on everyday matters. From there on, Mr. Mitsotakis will have to make decisions regarding the Maximos Mansion and its operation. Everyone believes that a central figure in the prime minister’s exercise will be Giorgos Gerapetritis, with the question of whether he should return to the Maximos Mansion.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, of course, is someone whom the prime minister often consults, as was evident from their private discussions in Albania, on the sidelines of the late Archbishop Anastasios’ funeral. Everyone now believes that March could be the month for interventions in the government structure.

Mr. Mitsotakis, in any case, is preparing for the battle in Parliament, which will coincide with the large mobilizations for the second anniversary of the Tempe tragedy. The prime minister’s view is clear: the opposition seeks to instrumentalize the tragedy to gain political benefits.

He refers the matter to the judiciary, estimating that the trial will begin soon. However, everyone presumes that the Tempe case, whether at a political or judicial level, will continue to challenge the government. It remains for the prime minister to decide whether next week he will give an interview on ANT1 to provide further answers.