People think they hear tanks when it’s just the garbage truck doing its rounds. It’s nothing new, though how old it is would be difficult to say. In many ways it seems to come down from the Occupation and the Civil War years, but it probably goes farther back, in a different form, to the Asia Minor catastrophe of ’22. Possibly to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In Thucydides, the rent in the social fabric is quite clear. According to Hesiod, “In the beginning there was Chaos.” Maybe its just the way things are.
The recent economic measures and the strikes and manifestations of civil disobedience which they caused, have certainly produced uncertainty. Chaos, like salos, or tromos, is a short, concrete, Greek word, but the government prefers the word “destabilization”. It’s long, windy and scientific-sounding. In official statements it goes like this: “Recent events have caused systematic erosion of institutions and serve as scenaria for the destabilization of a smooth course towards the modernization, democratization and radical change in our society.” (“Scenario” was last year’s word; “destabilization” is this season’s fashion.) This sort of pseudo-latinate nonsense is so tempting that all political parties of right and left have picked it up, too, and are bandying it about. “Chaos” is the kind of word which one can get one’s hands on and could have hurled with effect in the rock-wars that enlivened the streets of old Athens, but “destabilization” is like lobbing touristic Greek sponges. Everything bounces around ineffectively as the ship of state drifts into choppier seas.
Having lifted anchor by lowering the drachma, battened down the hatches and taken in public spending, and with the mainland conspicuously out of sight, it is natural for the passengers to ask the crew certain questions; such as, Where are we?
Is Greece with the West or isn’t it? Mr Karamanlis said Greece belonged to the West and plunged it into the EEC, as – in his own words – a baby is thrown into the sea so that it more quickly learns how to swim. Last month a deranged mother in Thessaloniki threw her baby into the sea and it did not learn to swim. It was saved at the last moment by onlookers.
Mr Papandreou says our economic woes stem from the hastiness of our entry into the EEC and lack of forethought regarding the accession terms, and that we have lost more thereby than we have gained. So who are the onlookers? The Eastern bloc? The Arabs? The International Monetary Fund? The owners of monastic property?
If the ship of state should run into head-on winds, we know that Commodore Papandreou is at the helm and that he is a master of tacking and jibbing. But who are the others on the poop deck? Who, for instance, is George Trepeklis, 31, who had been general secretary of the National Tourist Organization for 33 days when it was discovered that he had not done his military service and that his application for the renewal of its postponement was submitted after the expiration of the deadline? At present he is no doubt an able addition to the Navy, but little seems to be known of him except that he was a friend of Mr Andreas Papandreou, Jr., at the London School of Economics. Equal in sententiousness to the government, the opposition asked, “By what criteria are administrators chosen to head positions of national responsibility?”
Other questions arise, too, although with the resignation of the government spokesman, Mr Kostas Laliotis, and the decision to replace him with nobody – that is, with merely written press releases – the government may feel no need to answer any questions. Yet they should be asked, if even rhetorically. If under-productivity is the problem, is it to be solved by strikes which make the country even less productive? If cheaper exports are sought, are not the strictures and taxes on imported raw materials from which these exports are made self-defeating?
On November 13 singer Sotiria Bellou came up with another question. Spending a night in jail after being charged with gambling at dice in a kafenion, she expressed outrage.
“We weren’t playing craps like the chiefs of the police do,” – the Queen of Rebetika was referring to allegations that a high-ranking police officer was playing dice at the Montparnasse Casino at a million and a half drachmas a throw – “It was just a friendly little game of poker. Instead of getting after my tail, why don’t the police get after the terrorists?”
Excellent question, and perhaps it points to a solution. With a resounding ‘no’ to austerity displayed in the streets last month, yet with international obligations due, and with coffee too expensive to drink in quantity, perhaps if people gave up going to casinos and went back to their local kafenia, maybe playing lots of “little, friendly games of poker” is the smoothest course to follow for the “un-destabilization” of our national problems.
