Why Must We Now End Professional Politicians?
A Country in Chains
Greece, the cradle of democracy, is now imprisoned by a cynical parody of its ideals. What was once a proud republic that gifted the world with citizen governance has deteriorated into a post-democratic monster. In this grotesque system, power is recycled among a political class that no longer serves the people but only itself. The tragic irony is impossible to ignore: the land that birthed isonomia—equal rights under the law—is today a place where power is hoarded, accountability is absent, and the will of the people has been reduced to a televised ritual every four years.
This article is not a philosophical treatise. It is a roadmap and a diagnosis. It poses a single but monumental question: how do we overthrow the post-democratic political monster that suffocates Greece? More urgently, why must we, now more than ever, end the reign of professional politicians?
If we continue to delay this reckoning, we become complicit in the corrosion of our institutions, society, and, ultimately, our collective future. We must abandon apathy and reclaim our identity as active citizens. The cost of inaction is not theoretical; it is felt every day—in public hospitals on the brink of collapse, in underfunded schools, in every homeless citizen, and in every disillusioned young Greek forced to seek dignity abroad.
The Anatomy of the Monster
To defeat a monster, we must first understand it. Greece’s political system today is not simply flawed; it is deliberately structured to resist meaningful change. A professional political class sustains it—an elite that feeds on public funds, enjoys unchecked privileges, and survives not through merit or performance but through inherited networks, party allegiance, and media manipulation.
These career politicians are not stewards of progress—they are gatekeepers of stagnation. They enter public office not to lead with vision but to perpetuate their power and protect a crumbling status quo. Their survival hinges on staying distant from the everyday citizen. They are not elected to represent; they are elected to control.
They do not engage in public discourse; they manufacture consent through spectacle and misinformation. Their decisions are shaped not by the common good but by polls, market interests, and lobbyist whispers. Shielded by a media ecosystem that thrives on distraction and division, they thrive on disempowerment.
This is not democracy. This is a theatre of oligarchy. And the audience is growing restless.
The Price of Professional Politics
The damage done by Greece’s professional politicians is not merely symbolic but material, structural, and spiritual. Here’s what the political class has cost us:
1. National Humiliation
Greece has endured over a decade of externally imposed austerity, enthusiastically signed off by domestic collaborators. Who surrendered our sovereignty? The professional political class. They traded away national dignity for bailouts that never reached the people who needed them most.
These same politicians stood idly by while decisions were dictated from Brussels and Frankfurt. They raised taxes on the poor, slashed pensions, cut healthcare and public services—yet protected their entitlements. The Greek flag was lowered while their private fortunes soared.
2. Economic Injustice
The tight embrace between politics and big business has led to a form of state capture. Tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, rampant corruption, and the total abandonment of small and medium enterprises are not accidents. They are the deliberate results of systemic collusion. Politicians today do not work for the Greek people—they work for their donors, sponsors, and inner circles.
The economy has become a mechanism for funneling wealth from the many to the few. Public contracts are handed to the well-connected. Media licenses go to regime-friendly moguls. Innovative local businesses are buried under red tape while monopolies thrive. The rules are designed to exclude.
3. Social Decay
When people lose faith in their leaders, they lose faith in democracy. In Greece, voter turnout plummets while political apathy soars. Young people emigrate en masse. Trust in institutions is at historic lows. This is not just a political crisis—it is a spiritual one.
Citizens feel powerless. Elections feel empty—most suspect, often correctly, that nothing will fundamentally change, no matter who is elected. Cynicism has become a survival strategy. And this widespread disillusionment is the political class’s most insidious success.
The Case Against Professional Politicians
We must end the reign of professional politicians, because politics was never meant to be a career.
In ancient Athens, public office was considered a civic duty. It was temporary, limited, and closely monitored. Citizens were selected by lot, served for short terms, and returned to private life. This wasn’t a flaw—it was a design to prevent the concentration of power.
Modern politics has flipped that logic. Today, political office is a career, with salaries, pensions, immunity from prosecution, and a support network of consultants, lobbyists, and publicists that insulates officials from public accountability.
The longer a person holds office, the less they resemble a citizen and the more they resemble a bureaucratic relic. Their motives shift from service to survival. They stop listening. They stop serving. They become the very machine they once claimed to fight.
This system cannot be gently reformed. It must be dismantled.
What Must Be Done
Overthrowing this political monster does not require violence. It requires courage, imagination, and a new democratic blueprint. Here is a non-exhaustive proposal:
- One Term Only—No one should hold the same office twice. This would dismantle political careerism and open public service to honest citizens.
- Zero Privileges – Abolish special pensions, immunity, and perks. Public service is a duty, not a gateway to privilege.
- Link Salaries to the Minimum Wage – Officials should earn what the people earn. Let them experience their policies.
- Citizen-Led Legislation – Enable direct citizen lawmaking through technology. If Parliament doesn’t act, the people must.
- Immediate Accountability – Annual evaluations and public audits. Fail to deliver? Be removed.
- Open Primaries & Random Selection – Break party control. Embrace diversity through citizen participation and random selection.
- Empowered Local Governance – Decentralized power. Allow neighborhoods and municipalities to decide on their budgets and policies.
The Role of Civil Society
Change will never come from above. It must come from below—from the people, the communities, and the independent movements defying the status quo.
We must stop waiting for saviors and become the agents of our liberation. We must create parallel institutions, organize citizens’ assemblies, use participatory budgeting, and build civic platforms. We must use technology to coordinate and deliberate. We must become the democratic state we dream of.
The "Greece of Dreams" movement is not a fantasy. It is a democratic imperative. It envisions a nation where politics is not a profession but a participatory process—ongoing, inclusive, and vibrant. A Greece where every citizen has a voice. A Greece where democracy lives again.
Let every neighborhood be a school of democracy. Let our schools teach civic responsibility. Let digital tools connect us. Let us act locally, dream globally, and build together.
The Technocrat Lie
One of the ruling class's most effective tools is the myth of the technocrat—the idea that only bureaucrats and economists can govern effectively.
This is a lie.
Governance is not a science. It is a matter of values and choices. Technocrats are never neutral—they serve agendas.
We don’t need more managers. We need citizens with purpose, vision, and courage.
We must reject the elitist notion that ordinary people cannot govern. Diverse, thoughtful, capable people can craft policies, negotiate trade-offs, and lead. They don’t lack ability; they lack opportunity.
A New Political Culture
What we need is not another party. We need a political transformation.
A culture where public service is sacred. Where leaders listen. Where ideas matter more than images. Where power is shared, not seized.
We must raise our children to see politics not as dirty or corrupt but as noble and necessary.
Let our new ethic be rooted in humility, transparency, and solidarity. Let the cult of personality give way to the practice of collective responsibility. Let us lead with listening. Let us replace hierarchy with participation.
Glossary of Key Terms
- Post-democratic monster: A metaphor used by the author to describe the current political system in Greece, characterised by a self-serving elite that betrays the ideals of democracy and hoards power.
- Professional politicians: Individuals who pursue politics as a long-term career, often accumulating power, privileges, and becoming detached from the concerns of ordinary citizens.
- Isonomia: A Greek term meaning equality under the law; a key principle of Athenian democracy that the author argues is absent in modern Greece.
- State capture: A form of systemic corruption where private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage, often at the expense of the public good.
- Austerity: Economic policies, often imposed externally, that involve strict budget cuts, increased taxes, and reduced public spending, as experienced by Greece.
- Technocrat: An expert in a specific field, such as economics or technology, who is believed to possess the technical knowledge to govern effectively; the author critiques the idea that governance should be left solely to technocrats.
- Civil society: The sphere of organised social activity that is independent of the state and the market, encompassing non-governmental organisations, community groups, and citizen movements.
- Participatory budgeting: A democratic process in which community members directly decide how to allocate a portion of a public budget.
- Citizen-led legislation: Systems or processes that allow ordinary citizens to directly propose and potentially enact laws, bypassing traditional political institutions.
- Oligarchy: A form of government in which a small group of wealthy or powerful individuals controls the state. The author argues that the current political system in Greece has devolved into a "theatre of oligarchy."
The Time Is Now
We are at a crossroads. The next generation will inherit either a hollow shell of a republic or the foundation of a living democracy. There is no in-between.
The political class will not retire voluntarily. The people must remove them.
Let us be clear: they will resist, slander, and call us extremists. Let them.
We are not here to manage decline. We are here to build the future.
This is the moment for ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Teachers, nurses, builders, farmers, artists, and engineers have a stake and a role.
Let us organize. Let us speak. Let us act.
Taking Back Our Name
Greece must not be ruled by those who see her as a ladder to wealth or fame. She must be governed by her people, wise, bold, and diverse.
To defeat the post-democratic monster, we must tear off its mask, expose its decay, and reject its illusions.
Then, we must build one law, council, and neighborhood at a time.
Let this be our mission: to end the era of professional politicians and usher in a new dawn of participatory, transparent, and dignified democracy.
The country that birthed democracy deserves no less.
The time is not tomorrow. It is now.
And the ones who will make it happen are us.
Let us reclaim the future. Together.
