Put a bung in it
26 November 2014
or Pushing the Envelope
I don't know if corruption is more prevalent in Mediterranean countries than in Northern Europe or whether it is merely more blatant. It is certainly more noticeable, and the further East you go, the more noticeable it becomes. By the time you get to Greece and Turkey the tendrils of corruption and nest feathering seem to have infiltrated every aspect of life, especially public life.
There is, for example, the Greek phenomenon of φακελακια (fakelakia in the latin alphabet), which translates literally as little envelopes, but is used in Greece to refer to the bribery of public servants and private companies by Greek citizens in order to "expedite" service. For 'expedite service' read 'Get any bloody service at all'. Fakelakia is also linked to a cultural perception (promulgated by those who benefit from it) that the various documents issued by authorities, such as a driving license or planning permission for example, are "papers" you need to "buy".
Although the pervasive nature of fakelakia means that its pernicious effects contaminate all aspects of life, perhaps the most telling occur in the field of medicine.
Before everything went tits-up in 2008, Greece had a pretty good health service - culturally very different from the NHS, but pretty good nevertheless. Indeed, Greece has the highest number of doctors per 1000 people of all the OECD countries. Perhaps the most striking difference to Brits is that public hospitals provide medical and nursing care, but not hotel services. Relatives are expected to provide food and do personal laundry.
This, of course could prove a little trying for those living alone with no extant family, or for hospitalised tourists or ex-pats. Fortunately another Greek custom, ξενοφιλια (xenophilia), comes to their aid. Xenophilia is usually translated as 'hospitality. But it is more than that. The xeno part of the word means both 'guest; and 'stranger or foreigner'. Xenophilia imposes a social obligation to help and succour guests in the widest sense of the word. Almost invariably, an unsupported patient will find that the friends or relatives of those in nearby beds will extend honorary membership of their social group and provide food and other services.
However, it is in the getting access to medical treatment in the first place that fakelakia raises its ugly head. We have no firsthand experience of this. Coming from Jersey we do not qualify for treatment under the Greek health service and so have to pay privately for medical treatment. We do, however, have second hand experience.
A friend of ours needed an eye operation, and was entitled, through the EHIC, to have this on the Greek equivalent of the NHS. He saw the consultant, who agreed that the procedure was suitable and that he could have it on the Greek Health Service. There was, however, a problem. The waiting list, apparently, was so long that he would have to wait nearly a year for the operation. Paul accepted this, resigned himself to a long delay and said nothing. There was an awkward pause and the specialist then said that he should come back in a couple of days for a further consultation.
When Paul relayed this story to some of our Greek friends they just laughed at his naȉvety. The surgeon was giving him a second chance to pay a fakelaki. They patiently explained to him that he needed to put about 300 euros in an envelope and hand it to the consultant at his next meeting.
"What, blatantly?" Paul asked.
"Oh yes. Just hand it over."
Of course, being British Paul couldn't carry off such bare-faced, brazen bribery. He shuffled into the consulting room in a visible fog of embarrassment and held out the envelope mumbling something pathetically unbelievable like "A friend of mine asked me to pass this to you".
He never even felt it go. It was gone from his hand and in the doctor's back pocket in a flash. That surgeon could have moonlighted as a successful stage magician. He bade Paul sit down and opened his diary.
"Can you come in tomorrow at 9 a.m.?
Speechless, Paul gaped, open mouthed, and nodded.
"OK - we'll do the op then."
That 300 euros seems to be about the standard fakelaki . This is a relatively small amount and before the crash of 2007/8 most Greeks seemed to accept this as an integral part of life. Now, though, many cannot afford even such small sums whilst at the same time the squeeze on the living standards of medical staff has increased the pressure on them to require fakelakia.
As a result, there is a growing groundswell of anger and resistance to the endemic levels of corruption. One of the leading lights in this movement is the website edosafakelaki.org, which was set up by Kristina Tremonti after a traumatic episode she experienced when her war veteran grandfather needed urgent treatment at a public hospital in Kalamata. He had terminal prostate cancer and suffered a sudden onset of profuse bleeding.
In an interview with the BBC, she explained: "... we had to rush him to hospital. We were faced with absolute negligence. Nobody gave us the time of day - they were very disrespectful and basically ignored my grandfather."
"We sort of picked up the cue that they were expecting a bribe, so as soon as my mother reached into her purse and gave them the amount - which I believe now was 300 euros (£240; $395) - he was submitted to the operating room within an hour."
Before we wallow too much in righteous indignation and a sense of superiority of our own systems, perhaps we should reflect on matters such as taxpayer funded duck ponds and brown envelopes full of cash handed to the likes of Neil Hamilton.
Or MPs prostituting themselves in cash-for-questions.
Or senior HMRC civil servants being criticized for clearing cosy deals with tax-dodging companies and then whizzing through the revolving door to end up working for just such companies as lucrative 'tax advisors'.
Or senior army officers, previously responsible for agreeing contracts for millions of pounds worth of defence equipment, ending up being paid a fortune for a couple of days' consultancy work for arms companies?
Oh don't get me started.
And before I get too smug, couldn't it be argued that private medical treatment in public hospitals (to which I plead guilty as charged) is only a more formalized and structured version of fakelakia?
Motes and beams spring to mind.