From reading the fine print in the local press, however, one is led to suspect that the Soviet Union could no longer bear the financial burden of perestroika with so many extra foreign mouths to feed.
The Prime Minister had gone to Moscow with a large delegation of government officials and business representatives. The five-day visit had culminated in the signing by Mihail Gorbachev and Constantine Mitsotakis of a Cooperation and Friendship Accord which included important trade and shipping agreements, cooperation on customs services and control of drug trafficking, and a concurrence of views in foreign policy, such as the Cyprus issue, Greece’s Balkan peace initiative and the so-called Macedonian problem.
It seems that every time there is a Greek agreement with the US it is necessary that it be matched by a Soviet one, following the maxims of Aristotle, ‘nothing in excess’ and Observe the golden mean’. But, while much was being made of the “momentous significance” of this “historical occasion”, the Minister of Industry, Stavros Dimas, announced his resignation from the cabinet even while still in Russia. The government was quick to call the cause of the resignation “trivial”.
Trivia, however, are the things everyone is most interested in and “historical occasions” can go hang. It transpired that the Prime Minister’s lively wife, Marika Mitsotaki, offered a bit of advice to the Minister of Industry during a reception and Mr Dimas replied that he was unused to having voices raised against him and exited in high dudgeon. If these remarks sound excessive, this is why Aristotle said what he did, because the ancient Greeks were just as headstrong as their true and legitimate descendants.
The press in Athens was enthralled. An opposition deputy rose eloquently to the occasion, saying, “Given the fact that nine members of the Mitsotakis family participated in the official visit to the Soviet Union, it’s a wonder that only one minister resigned.”
Another believed that the incident strengthened rumors that the Mitsotakis family was “treating government ministers as domestic servants.”
The bitterest attack on the prime minister’s alleged nepotism has come from the conservative side of the media, in particular Kathimerini and its publisher’s radio station SKY, which assert that his wife and daughter in effect run the country.
In a TV interview replying to the accusation aired on radio, the Premier said, “I heard one tape that made my hair stand on end… I felt deep shame. Nowhere else is heard such language of the gutter used against a prime minister and his family. It is filth of the uttermost degree. It is a danger from which not only the political world must defend itself, but society as a whole.”
Replying to this outburst, the Hermes Mass Media Company filed a libel and defamation suit against Mr Mitsotakis demanding 50 million drachmas compensation. The press conglomerate displayed its civil spirit by proclaiming, if it wins the case, it will donate the money to charitable causes.
Meanwhile the government is said to be investigating possibilities that the press group is being secretly encouraged by rival conservative politicians eager to take over the party leadership. It is also looking into alleged financial corruption.
With such disarray and accusations of foul play being bandied about on the right, one might hope for reform on the left. No such luck. Doughty Ms Aleka Papariga, General Secretary of KKE, joined the elite company of Castro and Qaddafi by supporting leaders of the putsch against Mr Gorbachev in the recent coup attempt. As a result, it is understandable that Greek joie de vivre has temporarily soured.
Proof of this is dramatically revealed in an EC survey which shows Greeks topping the list of folks “most dissatisfied with their lives” within the Community. For a country which, for decades, regardless of coups, earthquakes, forest fires, droughts, socialist adventures and other inscrutible acts of God and man, led the optimism list, it is a headshaking comedown. Showing the topsy-turvy state of the world, while 45 percent of Greeks showed themselves dissatisfied, the once melancholy Danes now are rated 97 percent cheerful and life-loving (probably because they spent the summer on swinging Rhodes).
Greeks, however, have good reason to be grumpy. A poster printed by the Council of Europe recently showed most of the Greek islands in the Easter Aegean the same color as Turkey. A pamphlet published by the Italian Olympic Committee was circulated during Greece’s friendly hosting of the Mediterranean Games which claimed that historically Greeks were a bunch of Albanians and Slavs, thus reawakening after deep slumber the hysterical racist theories of German ethnologist Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer. On top of that, a very unlikely report circulated that Mr Bush whispered in President Ozal’s ear during a performance of dancing dervishes in Istanbul that “Greece is nothing.” A blatant untruth. Among other things, Greece is Marika Mitsotaki. And if her persistent “Fai, paidi mou’s” during a vast repast of Greek goodies at the Mitsotakis manoir in Hania in July meant that President Bush has to prolong his jogging sessions in Kennybunkport, then good for her.
