On the third day of Christmas, at an hour when many people were still on the road home after the long, festive weekend, Minister to the Presidency Menios Koutsoyiorgas explained the proposed Civil Service Bill in a television interview. The major aims, he said, are the renewal of the state machinery, the reduction of bureaucrats and bureaucratic waste and the eradication of patronage. Among the measures itemized are the enforcement of mandatory retirement after 35 years’ service (which will also apply to personnel in government-controlled banks); the abolition of the positions of General Director and Deputy General Director in the various departments, and the consolidation of a twelve-rank system into three. As an example of eliminating waste, Koutsoyiorgas explained that documents which heretofore required seven signatures will henceforward need only three, thus presumably saving time for both civilians and civil servants.
In immediate protest to the proposed legislation, New Democracy leader Evangelos Averof declared that the bill, unprecedented in any democratic country, threatened to dismantle the state. A spokesman of the Union of Civil Servants claimed that the bill was unconstitutional. It was also widely remarked in opposition circles that the bill politicized the civil service, bringing it under direct control of the individual ministers, who, in the last analysis, are party figures.
Koutsoyiorgas retorted that opposition to the bill was deliberately creating an atmosphere of anxiety, that there had been no “mass dismissals”, and that the cutting down of the bureaucracy by half, far from dismantling the state, would increase its efficiency. He pointed out that when New Democracy came to power in 1974, the government had 1,622 civil servant jobs in the four categories of “director” and when it was voted out of power in 1981, the number had been increased to 4,598. The civil service, the Minister said, had become like an army of generals without soldiers.
Several days later, New Democracy deputy Anastasopoulos claimed that the chief architect of the bill was Dimitri Economou, a Junta-turned-PASOK technocrat who had been dismissed from the Supreme Council of Civil Servants under the dictatorship in 1973. The bill, Anastasopoulos declared, was il-liberal, reflected totalitarian ideas, and pushed the country back seventy years.
Although the final vote on the bill could not be in doubt in view of PASOK’s absolute majority, the debate, which began the week of January 18, gave New Democracy a chance to register its official disapproval in Parliament. Amid accusations and counter-accusations of cronyism, nepotism, and corruption, Koutsoyiorgas’ Christmas present to the nation left a lot of people less than merry.
Melina in Crete
Last year Melina Mercouri won applause when, in calling attention to the poverty of her ministry, she stated that the Ministry of Culture was just as important as the Ministry of Defense. Given the wealth of its heritage and the flourishing present state of its poetry, music and fine arts, it is true that culture gives Greece its particular distinction today.
After a four-day visit to Crete in January, Mercouri announced the first of a series of measures to protect the island’s cultural heritage. Softening her previous position on foreign archaeological schools and the deterioration of the palace at Knossos, Mercouri said the extent of the damage to the Minoan site was not as great as she had been led, at first, to believe. The course which tourists take through the palace, however, would be restricted at once to prevent further damage, and a committee closely following Evans’ original designs would work up plans for restoration.
Slated for Iraklion was the creation of a Byzantine museum and the acclimatization of the interior of the Archaeological Museum. Sixty million drachmas will be allotted for repairing city walls and the Venetian shipyards of both Hania and Iraklion which will be made suitable for the presentation of cultural events. Since the only public library in Rethymnon is in poor condition, Mercouri announced that not only would libraries be established in many Cretan towns, existing ones would be restored, enlarged and enriched.
Rethymnon will become the base for a new Byzantine ephor and a theater will be built in the Public Gardens; the Siteia Museum will be granted six million drachmas for new display cases; a theater in Agios Nikolaos will be placed under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture; the Nearchos Koundouros house in Hania will be converted into a folk museum or picture gallery, and Kastelli will receive a new theater named after its native son, actor Manos Katrakis.
Concluding her remarks made to the press at the Ministry, Mercouri said there will be more careful and closer collaboration with foreign archaeological schools in the future, adding pointedly, “We should not be learning from foreign newspapers about what is going on in our country.”
In heeding Mercouri’s recent warning that Greece is in danger of losing its cultural face, we must unanimously accept that the Minister knows all there is to know about the importance of a face. Indeed, if she is able to gain a larger share of state money for her Ministry, her own striking personality will be a major contribution to the country’s cultural life.
The Athens Academy Awards
On December 29, President Karamanlis attended the annual presentation of the Academy of Athens prizes. Among other notables attending the gala ceremony were Archbishop Serafim, former President Tsatsos and Mrs. Ioanna Tsatsou and former Prime Minister Panayiotis Kanellopoulos.
The stars of the occasion were three leading figures of the Greek theater, all honored for careers that have extended over fifty years. Mary Aroni, best known perhaps for her roles in Aristophanes, and Vasso Manolidou, acclaimed for her portrayals of Shakespeare, Ibsen and Schiller heroines, have both been long associated with the Royal, later the National Theater. Manos Katrakis, one of the most acclaimed Greek actors of the century, and one of the most versatile by any standard his latest success in Hugh Leonard’s Da is now in its third year founded the National Popular Theater in 1955.
Special awards went to the lyric poet Lena Pappa; the dean of Greek journalists, Pavlos Paleologos, now in the sixty-sixth year of his career; to Aglaia Mitropoulou for her seminal books on Greek film; and to Popi Zora, for many years director of the Museum of Greek Folk Lore. Byzantinologist Beata Kitsiki-Panagopoulou won special mention for her Cistercian and Mendicant Monasteries of Medieval Greece. Silver medallions went to Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris, whose unique collection of Cycladic Art has been on tour around the world; to Basil and Eliza Goulandris for their gifts of the Andros Archaeological Museum and the Andros Museum of Modern Art to the state; and to Mrs. Perroti-Konstantopoulou for the 400-miIlion-drachma gift which has established the Nea Ionia General Hospital.
