It is unthinkable that an Onassis Prize winner wouldn’t express it in his (or her) acceptance speech and it is always followed by a warm round of applause. What is far less heard, but equally true, is that Greece is also the cradle of aristocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, monarchy, tyranny and anarchy. The words for most forms of government, good or bad, are of Greek origin because, being the first really advanced society, it was also the first to enjoy them all in turn. In the last 3000 years Greece has been through almost every conceivable political vicissitude. Only back in 1967 Greece was called ‘the coffin of democracy’.
But long before there were any of these things, according to the most Greek of ancient poets, Hesiod, there was chaos. In serious disagreement with John the Evangelist he emphatically states, “In the beginning there was Chaos.” And from the looks of it, it still seems to be around.
As of April there will have been, in ten months, three elections, five governments and two hung parliaments with bright prospects for a third. In the same period, an MP was assassinated, workable bazookas stolen from a military museum, a man detained for allegedly walking around Athens with a chunk of radioactive uranium in his pocket, and anarchists roaming the streets terrorizing citizens. At the same time every known organization in the country has gone on strike, many several times over. There has been an endless procession of marches and demonstrations, some led by nihilists and others by priests.
It is things like these which have led Mr Mitsotakis to call the situation chaotic. It is he who is saying Greece is sinking into the Third World, and it is some of his supporters who add that Greece has already bypassed the Third World and is approaching a close encounter with a Fourth World.
Now, it is usual in times of great national duress to beat a hasty path to the door of Constantine Karamanlis. As every one knows almost as well as Greece’s being the cradle of democracy, Mr Karamanlis is the Ethnic Saviour. He is also known to be a great admirer of de Gaulle and is nearly as grand. De Gaulle saved France twice; once during the war and again in 1958. Of course, Karamanlis saved fas country in 1974, but if in 1990 the postman is ringing a second time, the Great Man is in no hurry to answer the door. In fact, last month he appeared to be bolting it. On 10 February he turned down a proposal to stand for the presidency in these words:
“The many-sided-crisis,” he said, “in institutions and politics, in the economy and in ethics have, in certain cases, taken the form of national decay.”
The people, he continued, must realize that they, by their social behavior and their political choices, define the course and, consequently, the destinies of the nation.
“The crisis,” he went on, “first necessitates a courageous and unbiased ascertainment of its causes, and then the presence of a state capable of taking and implementing bold decisions for the salvation of the country, and of rousing the moral and intellectual forces of the nation to help break the present impasses and reverse the course towards national decline.”
He concluded that the ailing structure of the country’s political life would make his presence of doubtful value.
An interesting element in his statement was his scolding of the people themselves and, as a whole, it was a sharp dressing-down to a large portion of the population. If some felt Karamanlis was shirking his destiny, it must be recalled that the presidency does not have the wide powers he gave it in the 1974 constitution.
Mr Mitsotakis, of course, largely blames Andreas for those impasses which Karamanlis mentioned, and his constant straining for an effective majority in parliament, which has so far tantalizingly eluded him, makes him some times seem out-of-sorts. At a recent press conference he said testily that Andreas Papandreou should stop criticizing him in nightclubs.
Alas, this is the chink in the Mitsotakis armor, the tragic flaw in his otherwise noble nature. Although tall and handsome and Cretan, with a charming wife and four purposeful children and lots of lovely grandchildren, he gives the impression – fatal in Greece – of being unable to enjoy himself. For if one should think that in the midst of state bankruptcy, moral decay and chaos, all Greeks had become gloomy, this would be a serious misreading of the national character.
In brief, never have so many Greeks had it so good. They have lots of money and little work. They are on the public payroll. The state of the nation is of no interest to them. They flock to posh bouzouki spots, pay an 8000 drachma cover charge, twice that for a ring side table heaped up with bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label (the ethnic beverage) and all sorts of good things to eat and buy mountains of gardenias at 100 drachmas each and throw them in field-fuls at the singers, the musicians and each other till dawn. Amid such gaiety, how can somber figures such as Karamanlis and Mitsotakis seem anything but spoilsports?
