Demagogues and pollsters

In Greece nowadays, every single day that dawns, brings yet another nail in the coffin of the concept of logic. We were informed today that  a known poll company of Athens has, for some time ,(and until today!) run a poll on water privatization. In addition to the fact that this survey comes after the public commitments of the government that there is no longer a plan of selling the two companies EYDAP EYATH, we have to clarify that after the binding decision of the Council of State, this decision is neither at the discretion of the government, nor to the hands of those who have wished to put their hands on the profits of the two water companies.

Actually, we had the information that in one of the questions the articulation is as such: “Do you agree with the privatization of water services, provided that the natural resources will remain a public good?”
Often we have highlighted (and so did in its reasoning the Council of State) that it is rather pointless to talk about preservation of the public nature of the good of a privatized monopoly service, since the privatization of the management is enough to turn this protection meaningless. Besides, in the vast majority of the privatizations of water in western countries, privatizations with well known  negative consequences, we do not encounter the extreme phenomenon of privatization  of the “right to the water of rivers, lakes and aquifers,” the pernicious example of which was experienced by citizens of Chile.

We contacted the communication manager of the company who confirmed to us that there is indeed an ongoing poll and told us that it is commissioned. We asked for the name of their client who originated the research and has decided on the questions in cooperation with the survey company  and , unsurprisingly, the name is confidential.

We regret deeply that there are people in our country with such persistence in their economic interests who are willing to throw away money for opinion surveys on final decisions taken by the Supreme Court of the country. Maybe at some point a debate must be initiated as to changes in the status quo (N.3603 / 2007) and the transparency that should govern such surveys and their “initiators”.
We will come back to this  if and when the research is published.

To conclude, if there are some who want so desperately to learn the opinion of the citizens who are watered by EYDAP, we suggest they try to convince their political friends to dare to ask the citizens directly, as in Thessaloniki: The NO to privatization was 98%, but some people choose to not “understand”.

Semiological note: The two lions in the photo are a symbol of our attentiveness to protect the rights of the citizens in relation to water.