“No one can underestimate what happened yesterday. And it shouldn’t.” With this enigmatic statement to protothema.gr, a colleague of Kyriakos Mitsotakis set the tone for the government’s approach to the massive and peaceful rallies of quite many hundreds of thousands of citizens across Greece demanding justice for the tragedy of Tempi.

The sporadic clashes recorded did not, according to the government analysis, lead to “large-scale conflict” that could be taken as a signal of destabilization. The Hellenic Police had also been instructed not to use extensive violence and chemicals with the protesters present, which the first group of anti-authoritarians who started the riots at the hotels in Syntagma Square took advantage of. In any case, from the government they are not so much standing on the incidents as on the message produced by the large mobilization of citizens. And while Maximos Mansion does not ignore that some of the citizens were in an anti-government mood, they believe that the central message is that the state should do its job and secure rail transport as quickly as possible.

“In memory of the 57 fellow human beings who perished in the tragic accident at Tempi, the state has a duty to turn the universal demand of ‘never again’ into even more policies for safe railways,” government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis stressed yesterday after the rallies, setting the tone for the government’s interventions to follow. Government sources said the safety recommendations of the EODASAM report, perceived by different quarters as a “good basis” for discussion, will guide as the government “races” to make up for lost time. After all, one of the key findings of the report is that little has changed in the railways since the time of the accident and in any case any safety adjustments need to be initiated with maximum speed.

Immediate results in the rail safety aspect will be among the government’s top priorities, with Mitsotakis realizing that he must insist more on cuts in the state and “tangible deliverables”, measures and interventions that are understandable and beneficial to large groups of citizens. In any case, the government is also preparing for next week’s parliamentary battles, the debate on the Pre-Investigation and the opposition’s motion of no-confidence to be tabled on Wednesday.

More broadly, however, in the Maximos Mansion, they have a “social front” to manage that is unclear what expression it will find in the coming period. Whether there will be more mobilizations is something that is being assessed. In any case, at the core of Mitsotakis’ interventions at some point in the coming weeks will be the government, including Maximos Mansion. After all, he himself has said that people serve policies, so if policies are adjusted, the same must happen with people. The scope of the changes being contemplated, however, is the exclusive prerogative of the prime minister.