One contradictory statement after another had been issued from such a dizzying number of sources – many of them without medical knowledge – that a matter of national urgency had been turned into a sort of labyrinthine puzzle. That the health of the holder of the country’s highest office elected by the people could have a direct effect on the health of the nation does not seem to have been comprehended by those responsible for informing the public.
Mr Papandreou has been a powerful and controversial figure in Greek politics for decades and many of his adversaries must have often wished him out of the political arena. In feeling so, one assumes they have not stuck pins in his wax effigy but have just wanted him less popular at the polls. No one can reasonably have wished him physically ill.
On August 25 Mr Papandreou flew to London accompanied by three Greek cardiologists. It was said that he was suffering from stenosis of the aorta and that he would have open heart surgery at St Thomas’s Hospital, London. Later, it was revealed that an examination which had taken place at a distinguished clinic in Weisbaden had diagnosed an acute myocardial condition, a far more serious ailment. This diagnosis, however, was proved incorrect, according to government sources, by further tests performed at Athens State General Hospital just prior to the prime minister’s departure for London late in August. Nevertheless, a statement from Weisbaden Clinic took issue with the findings of “an inferior hospital” though it would not reveal its original report due to the law of confidentiality.
During this confusing and contradictory period the prime minister’s operation kept being postponed and after three weeks in St Thomas’s he was transferred to Harefield Hospital in Uxbridge which is famous for its heart transplant operations. In the middle of September, Dr Mahdi Yacoub, who was said to be leading the premier’s surgical team, left for a medical conference in South America.
At the same time, Greek heart surgeon Dimitris Kremastinos who led the diagnostic team at Athens General made his first public statement. He said that when he first examined Mr Papandreou two days before his departure for London he was, from the point of view of health, “the worst patient I have even seen. I have never seen a heart in worse condition.” Kremastinos added that without immediate treatment, the prime minister would have been dead in four or five days.
At this point Papandreou’s affair of the heart took on a new, more cheerful (if figurative) dimension. His half brother George’s candid camera had caught him with his companion, Dimitra Liani, at his bedside. It also showed him in green pajamas blowing out the 14 candles on a PASOK cake, for it was the anniversary of his Panhellenic Socialist Movement which he had founded in 1974. Again, Dimitra was beside him though whether she helped him in blowing out the PASOK candles is unrecorded.
It was probably Dimitra Liani’s constant presence at the prime minister’s side in London and their being photographed holding hands that led to a statement’s being issued in Athens on behalf of Mrs Papandreou. It announced weightily: “Future historians will shed light on all these immoral things going on and will clarify which persons living next to him in these recent times bear primary responsibility for the unforgivable negligence or guilt for the prime minister’s health.”
The following day the Greek government spokesman said that the premier would start divorce proceedings when he returns to Athens. Meanwhile, Dimitra Liani herself petitioned for divorce from her husband Alexander Kapopoulos, a senior official of a Maoist political party.
Future historians, however, may have their hands full trying to describe what was going on in Greece during the prime minister’s protracted absence. Denying the opposition’s contention that there was a power vacuum at home, the government replied that there were now two prime ministers fulfilling the premier’s orders.
All agreed that first deputy premier Yiannis Haralambopoulos and second deputy premier Agamemnon Koutsoyiorgas, now elevated to absolutely equal rank, co-starred to perfection at the opening of the Thessaloniki International Fair on September 10. The duet was performed without a false step. If one preceded the other at one point, they changed places at the next. They even divided the prime minister’s speeches neatly between them and every time the absent leader was mentioned by name, there was thunderous applause.
It is true that during this period the left-wing newspaper Proti revealed that New Democracy was leading PASOK by over ten percent at the polls. It was also true that the pro-government newspaper Ethnos declared that during Papandreou’s illness the country had been “bombarded with machinated secrecy, clumsy lies, ridiculous retractions, drtflgerous disorientation, anxious cover-ups, foolish fabrications and coarse distortions of the truth” which had made Greece the laughing-stock of nations.
The government good-humoredly ignored all this petulance. There was no question of anyone assuming Papan-dreou’s duties as prime minister, it announced. He was in constant communication with leading officials. His health was improving. “Everything,” said the government spokesman, “is going like clockwork.”
The prime minister’s future mother-in-law, Mrs Liani, caught the genial, optimistic tone of officialdom. “The children,” she said, “will decide for themselves what’s best.”
Meanwhile the medical condition of the country could be called “stable, at least for the moment.” It would certainly feel better if Melina were by its bedside holding its hand, but unfortunately she, too, was hospitalized in England with a medical problem of her own.
