In the early hours of Sunday morning, I stepped out onto the balcony of my apartment, some 10 kilometers (16 miles) from the center of Athens, to see the ridge of a nearby mountain glow like the nightlight in my son's room.
Within minutes, giant flames crept into full view to confirm that yet more trees and homes in the suburbs of the Greek capital were being destroyed. With them, whatever diminishing hopes the conservative New Democracy government had of clinging on to power may also have gone up in flames.
The wildfires could not have come at a worse time for the government, already trailing in the opinion polls to the center-left PASOK, which comfortably won June's European Parliament elections.
New Democracy supporters might point to the fact that the conservatives won the 2007 general election when it was held just days after huge swathes of the Peloponnese burned, indicating that the electorate was unmoved by claims that the disorganization of the state-run emergency services was to blame for the scale of the disaster.
But there is a key difference between 2007 and 2009. The fires of two years ago burned through many inaccessible areas, remote villages and olive groves that are a world away from the urban jungle that Athenians, who represent more than a third of Greece's population, are familiar with. In contrast, before reaching the suburbs of the city, the recent fires destroyed a part of Attica, or greater Athens, a playground for city dwellers, who head there for a swim at the beach or for a meal at a taverna.
The 2007 fires damaged the Greek countryside, but the August 2009 fires ripped through Athens' backyard. While most Greeks appeared willing to overlook a lack of coordination and wherewithal two years ago, few will so readily turn a blind eye now.
For New Democracy, this could be disastrous because the next general election, expected to take place by March 2010, is likely to be decided by the middle-class urbanites whose support the conservatives have courted since 1997, when Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis took over the party's leadership.
The government has attempted a damage-limitation exercise in the wake of the fires. However, its insistence that authorities acted effectively, despite the fact that a small fire that broke out on Friday evening ended up burning through more than 20,000 hectares in a weekend, is not very convincing.
In time-honored Greek tradition, the government has flung open its pocketbook after realizing its words are not enough to appease people. Mirroring its policy from the 2007 fires, New Democracy has swiftly announced compensation for dozens of homeowners who lost properties. Those whose homes were completely destroyed will get 750 euros ($1,070) per square meter as opposed to 450 euros ($640) per square meter for those whose properties were just damaged. More than 3 million euros ($4.3 million) will be given to local authorities. Livestock breeders and crop farmers will also be compensated.
The economic impact of these fires does not match that of 2007, when olive production was hit hard and more than 1,300 new homes had to be built. This time only some 200 properties have been affected and the farming was on a small scale.
Any dent in public finances, however, pales in comparison with the damage that has been done to Athens's environment and, as a result, to the government's image. It promised to learn from the mistakes of 2007, to put the right people in charge, to get better equipment and to improve coordination between authorities but because so little has been done, these now seem like empty promises.
Whether New Democracy pays the price for its failings will also depend on how PASOK handles the aftermath of the blazes. In 2007, socialist leader George Papandreou began blasting the government on environmental issues while the wildfires were still raging. This time he and his party have been more circumspect, waiting for the fires to be put out before they present their proposals on the environment--a policy area that the conservatives have been severely lacking in since coming to power in 2004. The socialists will also be aware that many of the legal loopholes that allow land grabbers and developers--suspected of causing many of the country's wildfires--to illegally build homes on burned land were created while they were in power.
Despite leading in the opinion polls throughout this year, PASOK has failed to come up with the game clincher. Most surveys have shown the socialists would win the next election but would not have enough parliamentary seats to form a government on their own. Papandreou has too often opted for a populist, reactionary agenda when the situation has demanded a more measured approach and policies to deal with real problems.
All of a sudden, though, the wildfire I witnessed coming over the mountain last Sunday may have blazed a trail for him while reducing the chances of the current government being reelected to cinders.
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