By Apostolis Fotiadis
ATHENS, Jan 21 2008 (IPS)

On Dec. 20, three days after his resignation as secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Christos Zahopoulos jumped from the fourth floor of his flat in Athens city centre. He has partly recovered but is going to face serious long-term health problems.

The following day, Giannis Andrianos, press officer for Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, handed judicial authorities a DVD showing Zahopoulos engaging in intercourse with an ex-employee of the ministry. He claimed the DVD was given to him by a journalist.

The material suggested that Zahopoulos attempted suicide because he was being blackmailed by Tsekou, who wanted permanent employment in the ministry. The ministry employs thousands of workers on seasonally updated contracts for long periods; as a result they face continuing insecurity about their employment status.

Officials have also alleged attempts to blackmail the government over allegations of corruption.

Since renewing its mandate with a weak majority of only two seats in the national elections last September, the conservative government has lost credibility in the face of multiple corruption allegations.

The government is now accused of attempting to focus on the "pink" version of the Zahopoulos case to hide the scale of corruption in the ministry of culture.

"It is known that the administrative irregularities in the M.C. (ministry of culture) are nothing less than a black hole," Stathis Gotsis from a union in the ministry told IPS.

"First, the ministry&#39s special accounts, credited mostly by taxes on national lottery profits, completely lack transparency. About 80 percent goes into wages, and the rest, millions of euros, is left to the secretary to use at will. This is a window always used by whoever is in charge of the ministry for handling political money.

"There are also many questions on how European funds available for maintenance and building infrastructure were handled by Zahopoulos. This is big money pushed around by problematic tenders and methods."

The scandal took a new turn Jan. 4 when a lawyer of Evi Tsekou, the ex-employee photographed with Zahopoulos, also attempted suicide, jumping in front of a truck. He escaped with minor injuries.

The lawer, Iraklis Koutelidas, knew Zahopoulos personally through Tsekou, and had co-operated with him in the past. He had accompanied his client to various meetings with a journalist where she is believed to have exposed her relationship with Zahopoulos.

Before his suicide attempt, Koutelidas addressed two notes to different MPs denying any involvement of his client, or himself, in illegal acts, and accusing the government of misleading the public. He said that the reasons for Zahopoulos&#39s attempted suicide went deeper than involvement with his client.

Consequently, enormous pressure was put on press spokesman Andrianos, who named the journalist who had brought him the DVD before the prosecutor Jan. 14.

The same day, Jan. 14, Themos Anastasiadis one of the biggest publishers and a major shareholder in the leading tabloid Proto Thema was named in the media as the person that Andrianos claimed he received the DVD from.

Makis Triadafillopulos, the other major shareholder of Proto Thema, and one of the most popular journalists in the country, also accused Anastasiadis of giving the DVD to government officials in exchange for halting an official investigation about the source of 5.2 million euros found in his account in the bank BNP Paribas.

Anastasiadis denied the allegations, and claimed he is becoming the target of interests attempting to damage the paper and him.

It is still unclear who brought the DVD to the press officer of the PM, and for what purpose. But the situation has exposed an all-out war among big media tycoons connected to shadowy interests attached to political power. This has led to widespread expression of disenchantment with political life in the country.

The government&#39s handling of the case is particularly damaging Prime Minister Karamanlis who had made Zahopoulos, an old friend, his personal choice for the post. Karamanlis&#39s New Democracy (ND) party has sought to present Karamanlis as a leader determined to fight corruption and to revive political ethics.

"The character of the latest developments is to some extent related to the communication strategy that the PM followed all these years, choosing to appear as the distant and popular leader, which today makes him seem more like a loner than the head of executive power in the country," Prof. Panagis Panagiotopoulos from the sociology department at the university of Athens told IPS.

The first popularity ratings for 2008 brought the two biggest parties ND and the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement; both associated widely with the creation of a strong consumer culture and corrupted state structures, to their lowest since the 1980s.

"We cannot pinpoint the forces dragging this country down, these are simply too many," well-known journalist Nikos Xidakis commented in the Kathimerini newspaper last week.

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