Karamanlis had resigned from this post a few days earlier in order to prepare for his ascent to the Presidency. The two main contenders for the post were Defense Minister Evangelos Averof-Tossitsas and Foreign Minister George Rallis. Both had held important ministerial posts not only in the New Democracy Party since its founding after the fall of the Junta, but in the former National Radical Party which had also been established by Karamanlis after he was elected Prime Minister for the first time in 1956. Averof, whose approach to the Junta with a proposal to return the country gradually back to democracy had won him the nickname “The Bridge”, represented the more conservative elements of the party, while Rallis had the support of its more liberal members. Most predictions favored the victory of Averof although it was believed that the vote would be close.
While the caucus was in progress, the Averof supporters out in the corridors and staircases were well organized and confident, and his well-wishers were more numerous outside the Parliament building. The vote indeed was close. When 150 ballots had been counted, Averof was still seven votes ahead. When the vote was complete he had lost by four.
Although Rallis and Averof left the Senate Chamber at 1:00 p.m. arm-in-arm, averring they would be united forever, the adherents of the latter were at first dismayed, claiming that there had been a sell-out, that the party had been divided, or that it had dissolved.
At this point the motorcade which was to accompany Averof triumphantly back to his home in Kifissia was dismissed; a woman dressed in the costume of Metsovo, the Averof country seat in Epirus, dropped her flowers in the street; and George Rallis, the new Prime Minister, walked with a few friends back to his flat a few blocks away.
Tourism 1980
AS the new tourist season gets under way it is perhaps the time to say — since no one else seems to be saying it — that it promises to be a particularly rewarding one (at least for the tourist). For the annual visitor, there are changes since last year, as can be expected from a country that is dedicated to self-improvement. While it is true that prices are somewhat higher than last year, the drachma has fallen so much against the pound, the franc (French. Swiss and Belgian), the Deutsch mark and even the dollar, that the difference will seem negligible to foreigners. Although the Caryatids this year will no longer be found on the Erechtheum, which itself has largely vanished since last summer, they can be viewed at closer quarters behind a burlap curtain in the museum. Despite the traffic’s having become somewhat heavier in Athens, drivers are wearing —or at least are supposed to be wearing — seatbelts, which has somewhat reduced eccentricity on the road. As for that funny-looking cloud hanging over the Acropolis, ask not whither or why— one should be thankful for any bit of shade on a midsummer’s day.
Complaining about Athens has become a national pastime for those who have nothing better to talk about. As for that recent well-publicized survey which revealed that foreign businessmen prefer Geneva above all other European cities and Athens least, it only shows how depressing businessmen can become during a recession. In summer, life in Athens only begins after business is done, and it is locally assumed that life is the more interesting of the two. Yet even those habitual critics of Athens will admit that a city populated by three and a half million Greeks — which is even more than inhabit Melbourne, Chicago and Bayswater — can never be dull. And it is for this reason that the present tourist season, by all surveys, will be promising. Visitors this year are going to find more Greeks in major tourist spots and the ambience is going to be consequently more lively.
A cold war has for some years been waged between summer hotel operators and Greek vacationers. The former have often been treating the latter as second-class tourists. The result has been that Greeks (except the very rich) have boycotted, or been boycotted from, the chief tourist centers in the country. Partly, this has been economic. Most Greeks in the past have not been able to afford tourist prices. Partly, it has been social. Foreigners have been simpler to manage, and since they are more easily grouped together for excursions, are more easily scheduled for meal hours, and are less fussy about what they eat, it has made hotel operation simpler, though not necessarily better. When, this past Easter, however, a hotel with a staff of 500 found itself with a total of 43 guests, all Greek, managers began to look on their compatriots with less disdain.
A slight drop in tourist bookings this year, and a growing number of indigenous tourists who can afford current prices, have suddenly instigated operators to woo the local vacationer, with the result that foreign travellers are going to enjoy greater social and culinary variety.
A Greek will not be regimented on vacation any more than he is at home, particularly in his own country. He will not eat his evening meal at seven o’clock — which is as close in time to his lunch hour as it is to his usual dinner hour, and he will not sit down to a menu which is a pallid imitation of some tourist official’s idea of an international cuisine. Years ago, an “official” breakfast was introduced into hotels — every item measured out to the milligram — which bore no similarity to any repast served at any time of day in any part of the world.
As a result, Greek vacationers have in the past developed their own tourist areas. Most of them own small summer homes which they share with a huge number of relatives, or they rent one-and two-room “villas”, or they take single rooms in private houses. If they stay in hotels, they are usually C-rated. After the coast of Attica, the south coast of Euboea from Chalkis to Karystos is the most popular, and after that the north coast of the Peloponnesus between Corinth and Patras. In the north there is Halkidiki near Thessaloniki, and the Kavala-Thasos areas. In the west, they go to the culturally-minded Ionian Islands where there are summer festivals which are particularly organized to attract local populations. The elaborate “super-touristic” complexes on Rhodes and Corfu are not for them. This is a pity, for these local festivals and the everyday life in small native resorts are the very essence of a Greek summer. 1980, however, suggests the beginnings of a healthy change. Tourist operators in the more expensive areas which were once foreign enclaves are now offering Greek vacationers better seasonal rates and are not obliging them to pay for full or even half board. This year, members of Greek hotel staffs will be even willing to speak to their Greek clients in Greek. There even may be some tourist shops with signs in Greek. At the same time, more economically-minded foreign tourists will be attracted to resorts frequented exclusively by Greeks until now. And, finally, local tourists have even taken up the very foreign idea of camping by the sea and in the mountains — as the growing number of well-outfitted outdoor equipment departments of large Athenian| stores show. This new fraternization by the seashore and on the mountainside should increase everyone’s enjoyment. It is also the first time that people in the travel business here are becoming aware of the possibilities of internal tourism which has been so successfully developed in western Europe. It may be a difficult adjustment, but it has the possibility of being profitable in the long run.
World Environment Day
OFFICIALS who were seen stopping drivers and pedestrians on Patission and other streets in Athens at the beginning of June were not giving citizens on-the-spot alcoholic tests. These officials were employees of the Ministry of Social Services whose head, Dr. Spyros Doxiadis, is more concerned these days with people’s smoking habits than with their drinking ones. The tests being applied were measuring carbon monoxide exhalation, and were among a series being carried out at the request of the United Nations in observance of World Environment Day which took place on June 5.
Unfortunately, with an observance like World Environment Day, official enthusiasm for theoretical studies is often cancelled out by an equal lack of enthusiasm for practical application. If some of the most difficult environmental problems besetting developed industrial areas came late to this country, they have had a habit of lingering on. Fifteen years ago environmental problems in London and New York, say, were generously publicized in the local press. But far from being taken as prophetic warnings, these problems were seen with a certain smug satisfaction, as if they were due to some sort of moral laxity in the West which could never happen here. Ten years later, a local pollution problem took everyone by surprise. It had, of course, been growing for some time, although the Junta did not encourage its publicity.
Four years passed and while much was said and much written, nothing was done. Then, last year, an ominous cloud appeared. The vagaries of its passage up and down and across the Athens valley were carefully traced. It went away and then it came back. This year it returned at the beginning of June and dissolved again, discreetly, just before World Environment Day, as it would otherwise have been much photographed. The hard fact remains, however, that it will come back, and it will not go away unless something is done about it.
On the eve of World Environment Day, Deputy Minister of Coordination Souflias came out with a statement somewhat more strongly and concretely worded than is usually heard in official statements: “We are obliged, by the use of technology and the raising of necessary loans,” he said, “to give battle for saving the Greek atmosphere and to win it.” The use of mazut for heating purposes must end by Jan. 1, 1981. (This happens to be the date of Greece’s official entry into the Common Market, and joining the EEC means abiding by its laws regarding maximum pollution levels.) Gas from this date must contain fifty percent less lead. Electric power bus lines will be extended; new incentives will be given for establishing industries in rural areas; there will be no new factories built in Attica, and greater efforts will be made for moving highly polluting industries out of the area. Meanwhile, more stations will be installed for measuring atmospheric conditions and taking chemical samples.
As of now, the Ministry of Social Services together with the National Meteorological Service and the Athens Observatory will be responsible for observing significant air pollution and to suggest and introduce measures to combat it. Finally, the Deputy Minister warned that if serious enough conditions prevailed, traffic circulation in the city will be drastically reduced and measures strongly enforced.
Clean air is no longer free and pollution control is costly. Since many of the worst pollution offenders — bus owners, contractors, real estate dealers, arsonists, and industrialists who deposit noxious wastes wherever it is cheapest to do so — have invested their gains in conspicuous automobiles, perhaps they will take this final warning of the Deputy Minister to heart. Pollution will never be successfully controlled until it is forceably discouraged as a profitable way of life.
The Ionic Center
ANCIENT Chios was one of the twelve members of the Panionic League at whose festivals it is said the Homeric epics were first sung. Not only a fount of epic poetry, the Ionian cities also gave birth to natural philosophy and consequently to modern science.
It is fitting, therefore, that the island today is the home of the Ionic Center which was founded there in 1977 and which draws its name as well as its spirit from ancient traditions.
Among the eminent guests participating in this year’s seminars which begin at the Ionic Center on July 27, are painter Yiannis Tsarouchis, composer Manos Hadjidakis, musicologist John Papaioannou, singer Spyros Sakkas, author Nikos Dimou, philologist and translator Edmund Keeley and archaeologist Yiannis Sakellarakis. A special invitation has been accepted by Nobel Laureate Odysseas Elytis.
“The Center provides a setting and a focus on the critical, philosophic and scientific questions which mankind is facing today,” according to Isadoros Kioleoglou, the organization’s president. “The Center aspires to create a place where academic learning, scientific research and spiritual awareness meet in harmony.”
These are brave words to speak from an island only a few miles off the coast of Turkey, and set in a sea which has itself been made into a political issue. They are, however, in the tradition of ancient Ionia which first brought forth the light of reason into a barbaric world.
