Although Constantine Mitsotakis led an effective campaign and his New Democracy party presented a sensible program, for the Greek people generally it was vote for, or against, Andreas. After a year of devastating revelations of financial scandals involving many in high government posts; after the lurid international notoriety given to the PM’s colorful private life; with his government’s record of financial mismanagement so abysmal that the country teeters on bankruptcy, and with an educational structure in chaos and a public health service rather less than hygienic; after all of this – which would have caused any government in Western Europe to resign months ago – Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK still received nearly 40 percent of the country’s vote in a multi-party political system. This is certainly extraordinary and it is especially interesting because it not only tells us something about the personality in question, but also about the Greek voter and the political.world he lives in.
Whether Andreas has (or had) “charisma” may now be beyond the point, one reason being that that word died of overuse some years ago. But he did give the impression that he knew his audience inside out, better than any other politician in our time, better even than Karamanlis. Andreas could appeal to its undefined hopes, arouse gregarious emotions, exploit shortcomings and echo, in turn, its vanities, its credulities, its resentments and its fears. His timing was faultless and his ability to manipulate extremely refined.
At the acme of his reign, he had that kindly, avuncular look around the mouth which, combined with the shifting, darting executioner’s look around the eyes,was irresistible. His smile had just the right touch of scorn, and the way he called out to the people below him, he was no less than imperial. He knew, of course, that the Greek people for the most part are intensely nationalistic and yet hugely contemptuous of their fellow countrymen. So, we, too, can appreciate the effectiveness of that carrot-and-stick look which broke out at moments he believed to be critical.
Certainly many will remember that thrilling session in parliament in 1985 during the presidential elections when, directly contrary to the constitution, the paravant assuring secret ballot was swept away and the “yes” and “no” votes which were supposed to be of the same color but were somehow different, were dropped by deputies one by one before the TV cameras – and, of course, before the prime minister’s beady and benevolent gaze. That day paved the way to another when certain careful incisions were made in the constitution, and Andreas lovingly redefined the term ‘democracy’ in Greece.
In recent months ill-health and weight-loss may have reduced Andreas’ ability to project so effortlessly that sense of command. Yet he is still effective. The budget vote held in parliament last December – blown up to be a vote of confidence – took place before his eyes (again the TV cameras whirring), so that all should see PASOK members, sheeplike, repeating nai se ola (yes to all). It was very impressive. Andreas had that touch of the tyrranical which so many fiercely freedom-loving Greeks love.
One can only speculate what the effect of triple bypass heart surgery, Mimi and Mr Koskotas had on the results of the elections. Andreas Papandreou has a hugely developed political instinct and having the whole campaign revolve around him like some epically filmed psychobiography may have been to his liking. Certainly, his many pre-election interviews were almost all of a confessional kind. Probably the press, both for and against the government, were accomplices to this. In any case a three-and-a-half percentage increase in the voting total since 1985 is nothing for the conservatives to flap wings and cockadoodledoo about.
In the long run, it is possible that Andreas was brought down by TV-like so many of us. Greece is a living cautionary tale of how television victimizes both performers and viewers. It started out, rather innocently, as a means of propaganda, but surreptitiously it has corrupted from within, creating a world of dangerous illusion.
One has to go back to clips of the golden oldies to see Andreas in his heyday, tieless and sideburned. That’s when PASOK sank its green teeth into the Greek earth which ended up choking everybody. Forget the Khaddafi backing, the strains between father and son, the love-hate relationship with the abandoned homeland, the resentful but calculated return. Andreas was particularly good in opposition,poking holes in the country’s socially and politically atrophied oligarchy.
Where did all that reality go? Well, as always, society matured and politicians didn’t. Yet who can easily forget those images of oceans of people waving flags of plastic green suns against a background of bursting fireworks and smoking flares – Kavala, Kalamata, Iraklion, Ioannina, Thessaloniki, Athens – and the tired old man loomed into sight on his triumphal platform, in montage, waving – and always, but always, with the dubbed background chorus from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” which nobody understood of course, being Latin, but which translates something like this:
Ο Fortune, like the moon
you are changeable ever waxing and waning…
Fate is against me,
in health and virtue,
driven on and weighted down,
always enslaved.
