Word: also
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...third Papandreou to hold this office. In style, you are a very different leader from your father and grandfather. Your father was a very populist leader in many ways. Is that difference just reflective of your different personalities? Or is it also that it's a different time? Every leader wants to put his or her imprint on the work that they do, and grow up in specific eras. I think there is a heritage which I'm proud of, which is a fight for democracy, a fight for social justice, a fight for freedom. My grandfather went to jail...
...sometimes people also have unrealistic expectations of what their state or their democracy can provide. The Greeks of today or tomorrow, can they expect the same social support, the same social welfare state that the generations before them expected? Or are Greeks going to have to recalibrate their expectations? We want to make sure the social system survives. We have to become competitive. Greece also has both negatives, but also a positive on this because our social system is not well organized, there's a lot of waste. So in cutting down the waste, I think we can modernize...
...More checks and balances. Our budget is going to be under the scrutiny of the parliament, but also an independent body. More meritocracy in the public service. We now have a system where people will be chosen only on a meritocratic basis, not a clientelistic basis. This is slowly changing things...
...Also, decentralizing this huge central government to regional and local government so that services are provided at a local level, but decisions are also made a local level, which makes it more accountable. When I was Minister of Education, for example, I would sign the leave of absence of the driver of a dean of a university. So if he had to take his holidays, I would have to sign that. This is crazy. This is micromanagement. But the reason that existed was that one hand people thought that was control, and that comes from a legacy of authoritarianism...
...Sometimes, migration or living in different cultures can either make you a bit claustrophobic or defensive about your identity - and I think we may all go through that phase when we are in that migratory period - but it also can let you open up and let you feel happy about the fact that you have these different inputs and different cultures that you can use as resources. But this mixture of cultures I think also has, for me, done one more thing. You can see that Greeks in the diaspora have been very successful. I think one thing...