In this particular instance Mr Papandreou was referring to the incessant number of air violations which took place last month during NATO exercises, code-named Display Determination. Although a NATO member, Greece does not participate in its Aegean manouvers unless they include the island of Lemnos whose military status is a bone of contention between Greece and Turkey. Because of this awkward situation, Lemnos is simply overlooked by NATO like, as President Sartzetakis said recently, “another Pontius Pilate washing its hands.”
But why, people wondered, did it seem necessary for the Prime Minister to say to Greece’s allies that it was not a banana republic, and even to add that he might need to say so again? Is it possible that its allies suspect that it really is some sort of ‘closet’ banana republic? After all this recent fuss about Greece having been (or not having been) a client state, but now with five years of socialism tucked under its belt and everyone doing just as he pleases, one would have thought that the establishment of popular sovereignty was clear enough. Greece’s allies are a well-meaning lot but they may be a bit dense and need matters spelt out for them.
In the first place, Greece can’t afford to be a banana republic. The only bananas it produces are those hard, runty, Cretan ones that taste like plaster-of-Paris and are universally rejected by the sovereign population for those illegal ones that indeed do come from banana republics and are sold at great cost from the backs of pick-up trucks parked on the most dangerous curves of the National Road. A banana republic that can’t export its bananas is self-contradictory.
A golden opportunity for becoming a banana republic came up when Mr Alex Spanos, said to be one of the richest men in the U.S., paid a sentimental journey to the home country in September. Included on the trip were private talks with the president, the prime minister, the minister of national economy and other government notables. His wonderful rags-to-riches story, beginning with a voluminous trade in take-out sandwiches and ending with a fleet of private airplanes, golf matches with Bob Hope, and a Congressional Medal of Honor from President Reagan, did not fall on deaf ears. If he could be ‘touched’ for a spare billion or two, Greece could be turned overnight into one vast fast-foodadiko, teeming with gyros, souvlaki stands and loukoumades counters catering to the entire EEC. With the huge profits raked in, even the debts of Olympic Airways could be paid off and if President Sartzetakis could emulate the former president not only by purchasing a house in Politeia but by taking up golf, he could putt in the Rose Garden with Bob Hope while the prime minister was having a fireside chat in the Oval Room with President Reagan. As it fell out, Mr Spanos seems to have gotten cold feet, feeling perhaps that the third road to socialism might lead from riches-to-rags.
Another possible road to banana republicanism might have been increased tourism, but socialist idealogues have scotched that one, too. “Tourism,” one has been quoted saying, “is responsible for an imperialistic cultural invasion and our becoming the hoteliers of Europe.” Greece should have no more fears from that quarter as Athenian hostelries become problematic businesses.
No, Greeks cannot in any way be thought of as a bunch of banana-splitting yes-men. They have their own way of doing things which no other people do – and may not even want to do. They are riot answerable to anyone, as the prime minister has so often stressed. During the recent municipal elections, for example, one candidate got no vote at all (even he seems to have cast a ballot for his adversary), and in spite of the glorious socialist progress of the last five years, the three major cities all voted for mayors who opposed it. In Greece, people don’t vote for other people – they only vote against them.
Finally, the president on this occasion displayed a notable example of anti-bananaism. That he and his bullet-proof Mercedes were flown up to Thessaloniki in a C-130 Hercules transport plane so he could vote in his home constituency may have been cause for doubt. But not the reaction of the Office to the Presidency to a news snippet about the extravagance of the trip. In a long statement, it explained that the Hercules was smaller than a regular Olympic carrier, that being constructed for vehicles only, the chief of state suffers from deafening noise and lack of basic comforts, and that the cost of flight (182,000 drachmas per hour) was zero because the crews were obliged to make routine flights anyway.
Statements such as these should make it amply clear to the most display-determined, dull-witted ally that Greece falls into no easy category amid the brotherhood of nations – and least of all among banana republics.
