In a liberal democracy, in order for the government to effectively manage the problems, it must, among other things, strengthen the supervisory institutions that ensure the quality of the collective goods. Dealing with e.g. of the high cost of living, mandates the proper functioning of the Independent Competition Authority. Protecting security requires that the police and their oversight mechanisms work well. The confidence of international investors in each economy presupposes the good functioning of the country’s statistical service. etc. and generally the operation of an independent supervisory institution.
The proper functioning of a supervisory institution is not only a technical concept. In addition to sufficient resources, two important (and constantly to be proven) elements are required:
1. Public officials must possess the courage to exercise their jurisdictions with Boldness and independence.
2. The auditees (especially governmental state bodies) willingly accept the audits and their results.
The fulfillment of the two conditions above tests the character of the controller and the controlled. When the FBI began investigating the possible involvement of associates of Trump in Russian interference in the US presidential election (2016), President Trump fired his director James Comey. He later did the same with the US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch when she cooperated in his personal plans.
James Comey reports that, at a White House dinner, Trump had asked him for “personal loyalty.” Of course no decent official would offer it to him. In the rule of law, public officials loyally serve the law, not occasional political office holders. For politicians like Donald Trump, these are unnecessary luxuries. Institutions must serve the exercise of their executive power. When they don’t, they get fired.
The Greek Member of Parliament who had the honor of seeing his name feature on one of the infamous “lists” of public life, criticized the independent authority in Greece because he did not like the scientific data on the Evros fire (fire that burned the largest forest in the EU to date). The former president Donald Trump said the same thing when he did not like the data of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci about the evolution of the covid-19 pandemic. Fauci is an “idiot” and a “disaster” for the US, Trump said at the time.
In Greece, Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis Prime Minister criticized the Head of the Independent Communications Privacy Authority for “having his own agenda” and selfishly serving the institution he leads. What this “agenda” is, the Prime Minister of Greece did not bother to clarify and document, just as, similarly, he never documented his claim that the fire in the Evros was lit on routes often used by illegal immigrants. A good argument is anything that benefits the speaker rhetorically.
The argumentative tactic of displacement is a tried and tested one: to avoid accountability the politician arbitrarily and self-servingly shifts the debate from his own actions to the supposed motives of institutional auditors. With ad hominem criticism, the politician despises Institutional decisions that concern him, discrediting their recipient. By attributing selfish motives to him, he turns the discussion away from the content of the decisions – thereby avoiding accountability.
Thanks to the investigations of the independent Communications Privacy Authority, we learned about the wiretapping scandal in Greece. In an institutionally mature country, a political earthquake would have been caused given that the State Intelligence Service reports to the Prime Minister. Instead, the auditee avoided accountability to the Greek Parliament and sued his auditor. The president of the Greek Personal Data Protection Authority stated that he has never seen such anti-institutional behavior before. The Mitsotakis government hastily changed in a questionable way the composition of the plenary session of the specific Independent Communications Privacy Authority, while two of its elite members were summoned to an apology as Suspects.
At a recent conference, the head of the independent Communications Privacy Protection Authority wept publicly, stating that his judicial honor was being violated, as Mrs. Jovanovitch sniffed in testimony, after her dismissal, to a committee of the American Congress.
For an intact official, the purpose he serves becomes an experience. “We don’t swear an oath to a Kingdom or a Queen or a tyrant or a dictator. We don’t swear an oath to a person. We swear to the Constitution and the ideals it expresses,” Retired CJCS General Milley said recently as he retired from Command of the US Armed Forces. Inspirational Words. Everyone who holds a public office must remember it every day during their term in his public office career.
