For those whose knowledge of Greek history ends suddenly with the death of Alexander the Great, it should be pointed out that previous general elections were held here as recently as last June. Although they brought an end to the eight-year rule of the socialists under the leadership of Andreas Papandreou, the result was a hung parliament.
Then, a startling solution was found to the impasse. With conservative leader Mitsotakis, whose New Democracy party had received the most votes, stepping aside to let the more acceptable ND deputy Tzannis Tzannetakis become Prime Minister, the Alliance of the Left agreed to join the conservatives and together make a goverment.
By necessity, the aims of this interim. goverment were limited. Its first commitment was to make “catharsis”, that is, to investigate the alleged scandals which had increasingly disturbed the last years of the socialist regime. The other closely related reason was to restore wider confidence in democratic institutions.
The main results of this three month period were the indictments of the former prime minister and a number of his ministers, primarily for embezzlement and phone – tapping. The second charge was considered the more serious as being contrary to democratic process, whilst the first could be attributed merely to human greed. In any case, the charges were referred to the courts.
Another major contribution of the Tzannetakis government was the public incineration of millions of files which rightist bureaucrats over decades had collected on the activities of leftists. This symbolized the reconcilition of
Right and Left which the interim government truly represented. But the most pressing problem is the terrible state of the economy, due to the total difference of attitude in economic theory, practice and dogma.
While the accomplishments of the Tzannetakis government were considerable, responsible polls held during the caretaker period between the goverment’s resignation and the new elections, showed very little gain for the conservatives. Though PASOK was believed to be slipping, the Coalition of the Left, in the responsible role it had played, was said to be the gainer.
Among the many interesting phenomena of recent Greek elections is that about a week before polling day, the conservatives (who seem such a sensible lot at other times) seasonally come down with a heavily congested case of wishful thnking. On the eve of these elections, they were no longer concerned with a majority of seats in the House, but with counting up the surplus.
Then came “D” Day, followed by the body count. Of 300 seats, ND tallied up an agonizing 148. The stunned Leftist Alliance, with the sweet taste of power-sharing still on its lips, saw a loss of seven seats. The bomb-shell this time lay with supposedly repudiated Andreas the Great. For all his troubles that would have ended the career of another politician, he gained three seats, and to his delight, Parliament was hung again.
The conservatives were dismayed. Nor did they want to be reminded that most of them believed there had been irregularities in the June elections which had cheated them of a percentage point or two. As these new elections, all agreed, were squeaky-clean, this meant, that PASOK may have done even better, and ND not so well, as the results showed.
And it must be added with a sorrowful shake of the head (if one is conservative) and with a chortle (if not), that ND had not sufficiently examined the changes in the electoral law which
Andreas had so lovingly concocted beforehand, with the connivance of the Communists, which made an outright majority close to an impossibility in a multi-party parliamentary system.
It is usual in democracies that before elections, everyone claims victory, but in Greece everyone also claims victory the day after, regardless of the figures. But in this case, there were reasons.
Mitsotakis claimed that he led the strongest party in democratic Europe. This was true, but it still lacked a majority. He also pointed out that ND, gaining 46.2 percent of the vote, was hamstrung, while PASOK, winning with 45.8 percent in 1985, went on blithely to rule another four years. And this was true, too.
Even Andreas Papandreou claimed victory, declaring that PASOK, though placing second, was the strongest socialist party in Western Europe, with even more percentage points than the now ruling party in Spain. It was a brazen thing to say, but even this statement was true.
Scandals — alleged or proved, personal or public — which would have forced any other EC government to resign years ago, involved a political party which in these elections, did not lose, but in fact, gained; a party for which two out of five voters in this curious country voted in favor.
The magisterial Economist dismissed the matter as “something which could not have happened in a normal European democracy,” and got on to more important affairs like the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Constantine Karamanlis took a similar view, saying that the political situation “defied logic”. The Greek people when they get themselves into a muddle, run to Mr. Karamanlis just as little boys, when they fall and scrape their knees, run to Mama. This time, however, the elder statesmen was heard to mutter, “What a mess they’ve made of it, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”
