If President Karamanlis had not obtained the required number of votes, as he did, at the third and last balloting, Parliament would have been dissolved and the country would have gone to the polls for a general election. As things turned out, Karamanlis got his majority and the three hundred deputies got a reprieve until November, 1981 when their present term expires.
I was thinking about all this the other day when I was introduced to an MP at a cocktail party and watched him downing his whiskies and gobbling up the canapes with the abandon of someone who knows he has nothing to worry about for the next eighteen months.
I didn’t catch his name or his constituency but I gathered from his pointed shoes, ghastly tie, Mexican bandit moustache and gold teeth that he was not one of your effete darlings of the Athenian electorate who swing through a variety of ministerial posts with the speed and agility of a gibbon in the upper levels of a tropical forest. No, this fellow looked more like a grass roots deputy, solidly backed by an electorate of shrewd and canny peasants and stockbreeders who expected him to move heaven and earth to look out for their interests — if he ever hoped to be re-elected.
I asked him about his career.
“I have been a deputy continuously since 1946,” he said to me proudly, picking his teeth with the overgrown nail on his right pinkie.
“Except for the dark period of the dictatorship,” he added.
“You think it was a dark period?” I asked innocently.
He looked at me in surprise. “Well, I was out of a job, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, yes, I see what you mean,” I replied hurriedly. “I must say you have a wonderful record. Were you always with the same party?”
“Oh, no. Parties change, y’know. But I kept my ear to the ground, my nose to the wind and my eye on which way the cookie crumbled. That’s the only way to survive, y’know. Word of honor! Believe me.”
“But what about your constituents?” I asked. “Don’t they have any political leanings, whether to the left or to the right, and don’t they expect you to follow them?”
He shrugged. “They don’t give a blue fig what peg I hang my hat on. As long as I take care of their ‘rousfetia’ (special favors) — what the hell do they care if I’m a neo-radical, a paleo-fascist, a left-of-center Christian Democrat or a bloody heathen. Long as Kyr’Mitsos (that’s me) does a proper job for them, the ‘peskesia’ (gifts) keep rolling in on the bus from the village — the baskets of eggs, the chickens, the demijohns of olive oil or wine, the Iambs at Easter, the turkeys at Christmas and what have you. But if Kyr’Mitsos stops delivering the goods, then it’s goodbye goodies and no votes at the next election and Kyr’Mitsos is out on his ass with nothing to do but sit at a cafe and scratch his chin all day. Word of honor!”
“It must be a little depressing to think that you have to spend most of your time on ‘rousfetia’ instead of occupying yourself with more serious things,” I said, sympathetically.
“More serious things?” he almost yelled at me. “What do you mean more serious things? Haven’t you been listening to me? What could be more serious than keeping my people happy?”
“What I mean,” I insisted, “is wouldn’t you prefer to occupy yourself with the more serious business of legislation, of tabling questions in Parliament, guiding the nation’s destiny, so to speak?”
“You sound like an ad for a Rolex watch,” he grunted. “No, of course not. My God, what do you think all of us three hundred deputies do all day, whether we’re cabinet ministers, undersecretaries or simple deputies in the government party or in the opposition? Have you ever tried to get an appointment with a cabinet minister or an undersecretary?”
“It’s very difficult,” I admitted.
“And I’ll tell yoii why,” Kyr’Mitsos went on. “Because if they’re not on the phone dealing with ‘rousfetia’ they’re out meeting people at the airport, unveiling a statue of some obscure hero of the War of Independence in some even more obscure village, laying the foundation stone of a municipal stadium for a mountain settlement of fifty inhabitants, all over the age of eighty, or making speeches at the swearing-in ceremonies of junior midwives — and raising hell with the Undersecretary for Press and Information if a TV team isn’t there to record the grand occasion and show it on the nine o’clock news. Now tell me, my good friend, how in heaven’s name do you expect them to find time for more serious things? How long have you been living in this country, anyway?”
I nodded pensively. “I see what you mean,” I said. “It must be a hectic life, indeed. And do you think it’s worth all the trouble?”
“Of course it is. We get a good salary. No parking tickets, free mailing privileges, lots of other perks and lots of free travel. Most of us become members of inter-parliamentary committees at one time or another — Council of Europe, Common Market, Pan-European, Inter-European, Inter-Balkan, Mediterranean Area — you name it, I’ve got it. I’ve been to London three times this year, to Paris another four, to Strasbourg once and twice to Rome, Barcelona and Bucharest, attending various conferences.”
“And what do you do at these conferences?”
“I myself don’t do anything. Other delegates make long speeches and they never stop for a siesta so by five o’clock when the day’s business is over I find I’ve slept through most of it. It doesn’t make any difference anyway because I don’t speak or understand foreign languages. But the rest of the time I go shopping, sightseeing and enjoy the night life. We get wined and dined handsomely by the parliamentarians of the host country, and I come back feeling exceedingly refreshed and ready to tackle a new batch of ‘rousfetia’. Word of honor!”
“Tell me, Kyr’Mitsos, how does one go about doing a ‘rousfeti’? I’m very curious to know,” I asked him.
His eyes narrowed and he looked at me closely. “You’ve been asking me a great many questions this evening,” he said suspiciously. “You’re not thinking of running for Parliament at the next elections by any chance, are you?”
“Well,” I mused. “I’d never thought of it before. But if you’ll give me a crash coprse in ‘rousfetology’ I might give the matter some serious consideration. Word of honor!”
