Of the leaders known as “The Six” who only a few years ago had urged a third alternative to global peace, Indira Gandhi and now Palme had become victims of assassination. A week earlier the Prime Minister had reasonably doubled the number of his personal security.
Perhaps these circumstances were on his mind when he remarked to those who greeted him, “we are just passers-by. We are ready to sacrifice elections on an altar dedicated to the renewal of our country.” This philosophical allaghi caused surprise among his supporters, elation in the opposition and puzzlement at the center, if there still is one. Not so long ago, the Prime Minister was saying that it would take at least a second four-year term, and probably a third, and why not a fourth, to get the national caravan really rolling down the third road to socialism. “Never again the Right.” “Rivers cannot flow backwards.” It was all extremely up-beat; inevitable; even interminable. History is on our side; that was the idea. Now, suddenly, history seemed to be on nobody’s side. It was doing its thing.
On closer examination these remarks did not contradict those made earlier. Going on does not mean going back. ‘Change’ means what it says: change, and then change again. If Mr Papandreou was echoing his philosophical predecessor, Heraclitus, by implying you can’t step into the same river twice, he was not contradicting the remark that rivers do not flow backwards. The surprising thing was that these remarks did not sound like those of a politician in the heat of battle but of a statesman rising above the fray; the sort of thing one associates less with a prime minister and partisan leader than a president and national spokesman.
It is possible, too that the socialist defeat in France had something to do with the change in mood. Of all European elections, the French ones have traditionally always concerned Greece the most. The trouble is that there seem to be forces at work in PASOK which may not agree with the new thoughtfulness. The presentation of the French election on television is in itself an example. The reportage, at least initially, implied that the French socialists had won the election, and then, later, hedged a bit by adding that they won in the sense that they could have lost by more. It was like saying that Waterloo was a Napoleonic victory because he might have lost all rather than just most of his army.
It is said to be a law of classical TV propaganda that if you can implant the desired effect in the first ten words of a newscast, no matter how you wriggle out of it later, the results are positive because the average listener only pays attention to the first sentence or two. As no responsible poll has been conducted as to what percentage of the Greek people still thinks the socialists have won in France, the law shall have to remain theoretical.
No one can seriously disagree with the Prime Minister’s interest in the future; that is, with navigation conditions farther down the river of time. It would be foolish as well as risky for any opposition now to present a platform advocating a return to mountain streams.
Yet recently there has been a surprising amount of nostalgia being expressed in all quarters. Every photography exhibition in Athens describes a ‘Greece which is passing’, every funeral is a farewell to a better period peopled by better men; every demolition, even of a building of no great merit, is ‘an irreplaceable loss’. The feeling is certainly genuine, but with a past as long as this country has, it could turn into a kind of perpetual lament. Not going into mourning for one’s third cousins, which kept people in black for a lifetime, is one of the more laudable liberations of modern times. Future prospects may not look very bright at present, but persistently looking back does not in any way improve them.
Mr Papandreou has effected a revolution of sorts in the last few years. There are some who say that it has been well done, or badly done, or could have been done better. But that somehow it was not to be done at all, somehow sidestepped, somehow sidetracked, is beyond reasonable belief. As a remarkable example of instant-nostalgia-in-the making, it is even being said now that Mr Papandreou is likely to be the last charismatic national leader of the foreseeable future, as Greece merges closer to the world of increasingly colorless figureheads. This may be a relief to those for whom constant charisma over the decades has been too demanding. Others say, should Mr Papandreou loose the elections, the government which replaces his would have little chance of surviving more than a few months. In which case, if Mr Papandreou is the passer-by he says he is, he may be passing by quite often as the state barge floats on downstream.
