Let’s start with the punchline: in Greece, if you’re a minister, you don’t fear prison. You fear losing your parking spot in Kolonaki. That’s because our Constitution — yes, the sacred text — hides a clause so absurd it would make Kafka blush and Carlin howl. It’s called Article 86, and it’s the single best insurance policy for politicians who want to lie, steal, or screw up catastrophically without consequence.

The Joke That Isn’t Funny

Article 86 basically says: only Parliament can prosecute ministers for crimes they commit while in office. Sounds democratic, right? Wrong. It’s like asking the foxes to investigate who ate the chickens. And surprise: they always vote that nobody did.

Think about the Tempe rail disaster — fifty-seven dead. Contracts signed, safety systems delayed, money evaporated. Who faced justice? No one at the top. Or the TEXAN recycling scandal — millions lost, a company under investigation, but political names safely cocooned. Or the OPEKEPE farm subsidies that never reached farmers — because Article 86 doesn’t allow prosecutors to knock on certain doors.

If you kill people with negligence, cheat the system, or siphon EU money, you and I risk prison. Ministers? They risk a bad headline.

That’s not democracy. That’s is mafia code designed to escape crimes

This wasn’t an accident. Article 86 was designed by elites for elites. It’s the ultimate firewall, a built-in feature of the Greek state: a rule that makes accountability optional. Every time the clause was challenged, parties closed ranks. Left, right, center — all complicit, because all benefit.

It turns law into theater. Trials are rare, convictions even rarer. The few who are prosecuted end up in a “Special Court,” which sounds grand until you realize it’s staffed by politicians’ peers and has the lifespan of a fruit fly.

This is how systems maintain themselves: not through secret cabals in smoke-filled rooms, but through clauses hidden in plain sight that make justice impossible.

The Cost in Blood

We talk about corruption as if it’s just money. But look at Tempe: fifty-seven families burying their children. Look at underfunded hospitals while subsidies vanish. Look at farmers crushed while middlemen pocket their aid.

This is not just theft. This is violence against citizens. When ministers are untouchable, citizens become disposable. Article 86 is not abstract; it is written in coffins and unpaid bills.

Who protects the people, when the law protects the powerful?

So here’s the scam: the Constitution protects politicians, politicians protect each other, and citizens protect… nothing. We get to vote every four years and pretend it matters, while Article 86 laughs in our faces.

George Carlin once said: “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.” Article 86 is Greece’s version of that club. The rest of us? We’re the punchline, paying the tab.

The European Public Prosecutor Laura Kovesi came to Athens and said it straight: Article 86 is standing in the way. She’s right. And while politicians argue whether to touch the holy Constitution, citizens keep dying, paying, and waiting.

So let’s stop pretending this is normal. Article 86 is not tradition. It’s not law. It’s a crime scene dressed up as democracy. And until it’s gone, Greece will keep burying its victims under the weight of its own impunity.

If the law itself is corrupted, dismantling it isn’t rebellion — it’s survival.