IN her tiny office here, Hara Kefalidou rolled her eyes remembering the days just after her letter was first published in the conservative daily Kathimerini.
In that letter, Ms. Kefalidou, a newly elected member of Parliament, called on her fellow legislators to give up some of their vaunted perks, including free cars, the $425 fee for attending committee meetings and double pensions.
It was not an idea they immediately embraced. She soon found herself being lectured by party leaders about her lack of judgment. “I was so alone,” she said. “People that I really admired called and said in private in a paternalistic way: ‘O.K., you said what you had to say. Now, move on.’ ”
The letter — and her eventual decision to give up some of her own perks, including her free Mercedes — catapulted her into the headlines here, some praising her for her boldness. But it has also unleashed a torrent of criticism from fellow politicians who have called her an opportunist and a hypocrite.
Ms. Kefalidou, 46 and five months pregnant with her first child, says it just seemed obvious to her that lawmakers needed to make sacrifices, too. After all, her country was near bankruptcy and the government was asking Greek citizens to pay higher taxes, even as their wages, benefits and pensions were being cut.
“Consider for a minute the trade-off that I suggest,” she wrote in her letter, which was published in January, adding, “perhaps we will convince people to consider us as worthy leaders instead of privileged hangers-on.”
Ms. Kefalidou put the spotlight on an inventory of questionable perks, some widely in use. Why, she asked, should members of Parliament get extra pay for sitting on committees? Was that not part of the job? (In fact, in recent years, some legislators, sitting on four or five committees had doubled their salaries with the fees.) And why extra pay for summer meetings?
Some of the privileges Ms. Kefalidou dragged into the spotlight seemed to defy common sense. For instance, a lawmaker who is also a physician and fails to be re-elected, is entitled to a job running a hospital — even if he has never run so much as a clinic before, she said.
“That is an entitlement I don’t understand,” she said. “That cannot be right.”
And was it right, she asked, that members of Parliament should be entitled to two pensions — one attached to their profession and another after they have served just two terms in the legislature?
Ms. Kefalidou, a member of the governing Pasok party, had hoped her letter would prompt organized, institutional action — an intelligent review of salaries and privileges. But months followed and nothing along those lines emerged.
Meanwhile, her fellow legislators shunned her and newspapers, including the Kathimerini, started referring to her as the “attention grabbing” Hara Kefalidou.
Some politicians made ranting about her a part of the national political dialogue — pointing out that she was the daughter of a politician and “a scion” herself.
Letters and e-mails from her constituents buoyed her spirits, she said. “They applauded,” she said. “They were very supportive.”
Ms. Kefalidou grew up in Drama, a small city in northern Greece, an area of farming and light manufacturing, though in recent years much of the industry departed for former Eastern bloc countries like Bulgaria.
Her father was a veterinarian and a member of Parliament who retired from politics in 1989. Politics, she said, is in her blood like a virus.
But she studied mechanical engineering and left Drama for Athens. She ran for local office and worked on public-works projects — antiflooding measures, homes for the elderly, public parks.
“Very tangible things,” she said, clearly seeing that as a plus.
Nikolas Leontopoulos contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 28, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the leader of an opposition party.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/world/europe/hara-kefalidou-pushes-back-against-perks-in-greek-parliament.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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