A week ago, Pavlos Polakis, a SYRIZA MP, staged a performance outside a ground-floor apartment window with a worn-out awning reading “College of Southeastern Europe,” mocking Deputy Minister of Rural Development Makarios Lazaridis over his degree from that particular institution. This followed a heated clash in Parliament, where Polakis demanded to see Lazaridis’ degree. The deputy minister replied, “My degree exists, I can show it to you,” only for Polakis to retort, “Shut up, Lazaridis, shut up! I’m speaking now—you won’t interrupt!”
From all this commotion, let’s isolate the essence: a current deputy minister allegedly took advantage of a 2007 provision (which did not require a university degree) and was appointed at the time as a political appointee/scientific advisor at the Ministry of Education. To be clear, a political appointee in public administration is someone hired outside the ASEP process by decision of the relevant political superior (e.g. minister, mayor), with their tenure directly tied to that person’s term.
His hiring was legal, and as the New Democracy spokesperson Alexandra Sdoukou was quick to point out, “In the Hellenic Republic—and I believe in all EU countries—the right to vote and to be elected does not require a degree. Therefore, being an MP or a minister does not presuppose having a degree.”
Fair enough. So Mr. Lazaridis—and by extension the government—is law-abiding but ethically exposed. Keep two things in mind: (a) the private college is under investigation by authorities as a “fake” institution, and (b) the opposition argues that, under a 1994 law, anyone hired as scientific staff must hold a degree from a Greek university or from a foreign institution officially recognized in Greece.
So Mr. Lazaridis—and by extension the government—is law-abiding but ethically exposed.
The deputy minister handled the crisis with political audacity during a TV appearance on Open, which turned into a complete fiasco. He broke all records of second-hand embarrassment with his response—“because I’m handsome”—when asked by journalists why he was hired. He also claimed that he had (astonishingly) confused the letters “m” and “n” in his own post on 02.01.2026, in which he had written: “those of us who graduated from public universities […] know very well how many opportunities were lost…”
Amid this festival of absurdity, data from the Data Journalists investigation also came to light: in March 2014 there were 1,949 political appointees, while in 2025 there were 3,600, with the largest increase recorded from 2019 onwards. It’s enough to make you collapse. Our entire system is built on the broader notion of clientelism. Wasn’t this exactly what we were discussing before Easter, in relation to the European Public Prosecutor’s case files on OPEKEPE—when we were weighing whether political favors granted by ministers and MPs to the then head of OPEKEPE were light, heavy, significant or insignificant, and borderline legal or illegal? Isn’t the same logic connected to the fact that direct awards in public contracts have exceeded 70% over the past six years?
Moving beyond the legal/illegal distinction—which is the judiciary’s domain—this is about what is ethically and politically acceptable. M. Lazaridis, who was the prime minister’s communications advisor in 2017, an MP since 2019, and New Democracy’s rapporteur on the parliamentary inquiry into the OPEKEPE scandal, feels so “handsome,” then let him take responsibility for his own public humiliation, spare the government that is being dragged down with him, and resign—not because he lacks a degree or because his degree is not from a university, but because he cannot keep treating us as such utter fools right to our faces.
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