Friday served as a noteworthy milestone for the current conservative Mitsotakis government, a few days shy of last July 7's convincing election victory over leftist SYRIZA, as it hailed what it called the commencement of the iconic Helleniko privatization in coastal southeast Athens.
The occasion was used as a prominent "photo opportunity" by the government and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who stood in front of television cameras as a couple of excavators began tearing down one of the scores of abandoned buildings in what once served as Athens' international airport.
"It's encouraging that amid a landscape of economic difficulty that this emblematic investment in the country begins today, turning a reality," Mitsotakis said in widely covered statements.
The pro-business and pro-reform Greek premier and his center-right party had invested heavily in the pre-election period on finally getting the privatization off the ground.
Mitsotakis reminded that the massive eight-billion-euro property development project will create the largest coastal urban greenspace in the Mediterranean, at 250 hectares, along with generating some 80,000 jobs.
The prime tract of land has remained idle for two decades, except for the summer of 2004, when a handful of events for the Athens Olympics Games were held in new, mostly temporary facilities there. Much to the dismay of Athens residents and the business community, one location at the site was used as a garbage collection and re-transport point by a local municipality as well as a "hotspot" to host third country asylum seekers that illegally entered the country.
Conversely, the main opposition party, SYRIZA, which until last July held power, merely referred to a "PR show, one that belongs in a manual for deception and incompetence."
A statement by the leftist opposition said the government's "rally cry" of economic growth involved the demolition of what it called 900 illegal buildings at the site.
SYRIZA party and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, were vocal and active opponents of the privatization before winning the January 2015 election, referring to a "sell-off", environmental degradation and economic development for the few and not the many. However, once in power, and especially after signing off on a painful third bailout memorandum, a SYRIZA government mostly worked towards allowing the privatization to proceed.
Despite an "about-face" by the then ruling party, proverbial Greek bureaucratic "foot-dragging", repeated legal challenges and a lengthy international tender for a gaming concession, within the privatization, kept work crews at bay.
In a later reply to both SYRIZA and speculation among some press outlets and in social media, the government emphasized that all the works at the site are paid for by the concessionaire, Athens-based and listed Lamda Development.
