Meritocracy

This article of prof. Tsoukas makes a great overview of the lack of meritocracy in Greece, which is the main reason I left few years ago. One of the examples in the article is the recent resignation of the head of the army. General Ziazias was pressed by the ministry to promote military officers based on the political beliefs rather than merit, and as any man of honor would have done, he resigned.

However, this action instead of resulting to the dismissal of the minister (Panagiotopoulos), as it would have been in a decent country, in Greece the General Ziazias was replaced with another, possible more easy going officer and life goes on. More interestingly the media treated the news of the resignation, as something insignificant. The fact that people in public offices like minister Panagiotopoulos, prefer to serve a party's interests rather than the country's is silently ignored and tolerated.

I greatly admire the General's Ziazias, action, but I believe he actually did a disservice to the country. Resigning leaves space to be filled in by a yes-man or a puppet. Staying and playing by the rules is hard (especially since the rules are regularly modified by the ministry), but could have payed off in the long run if he had managed to set an example.


As a side-note I'd like to express my admiration not only to the General, but to all public officers that function with honor and independence. They are Greece to me.