Editorial Ta Nea: Immediate initiatives

When the law establishing the right of Greek citizens who are permanent residents of foreign countries to vote in general elections in Greece was passed, the political compromises made in order to ensure the broadest possible inter-party consensus raised concerns among those who assumed the duty of implementing them.

As the next general elections nears, those concerns have become more intense.

To date, only 4,000 Greeks who live abroad have registered on the special electronic platform of the interior ministry.

The framework perhaps proved to be more restrictive than expected.

Moreover, it appears that dysfunctions and delays arising from the process of digitising the archives of documents required for the approval of each application reduced the initial interest of prospective voters.

Understandably, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on all his trips abroad asked the representatives of Greek communities to support the process, as many eligible voters are not registering due to a reluctance to deal with the bureaucratic red tape.

It is a pity that such an initiative, which was the result of many hours of meetings of the representatives of political parties, has not produced the desired result.

The government must exhaust all means to increase the interest of Greek citizens living in foreign countries, including an information campaign and the mobilisation of community organisations and consulates abroad.

The greater the number of voters in the next election, the greater the wager that will have been won, not only by the current government, but also by all those who pressured for voting by Greek abroad to be instituted.

Otherwise, we shall once again be speaking of good intentions that were lost in the maze of bureaucratic procedures.