Greece urgently needs to redefine its values and restore trust after a seemingly endless series of political corruption scandals, Greek President Karolos Papoulias said in a rare intervention in politics on Friday.
A probe into German engineering group Siemens' Greek subsidiary hit the headlines in recent months after a string of shipping, land-swap, sex-tape and bonds scandals which has rocked the govenment.
"The crisis is deep. Not only because some politicians use politics as a vault for a wealthy life. Not only because chronic problems in public life remain," Papoulias said during an ceremony marking the restoration of democracy in 1973.
"The crisis is deep because our code of values has been struck. All kinds of favouritism and clientelism have been morally legalised," said Papoulias, whose role is largely ceremonial but as guardian of the constitution is meant to step in in times of crisis.
After sweeping to power in 2004 on pledges to clean up Greek politics after decades of socialist graft, the ruling conservative New Democracy party lost European Parliament vote last month, shaken by scandals in its five years in power.
New Democracy and the main opposition socialist PASOK party regularly trade corruption accusations and many scandal-weary Greeks chose not to vote. Papoulias said the extent of the crisis was shown by the large abstention from the EU election.
"We need to redefine the rules — what is right and wrong, what is just and unjust, what unites personal with common interest," Papoulias told politicians and veterans of resistance to a junta which tortured and jailed thousands of Greeks.
The ceremony itself was paired down from a usual glamorous evening reception to a morning speech.
The conservative government, which clings to a fragile one-seat majority in Parliament, narrowly avoided snap elections in May after a shipowner testified that an aide to a minister asked him for bribes for ferry contracts.
Greeks see their political parties as Europe's most corrupt, watchdog Transparency International said in its annual survey of corruption in June.
Nearly one in five Greek respondents said themselves or someone in their household had paid a bribe in the past 12 months, the second-highest score in the EU after Lithuania.
