Klafthmonos Square which for over a century held the majority of political gatherings is strictly out of the running. The City Police and the Ministry of Public Works agreed that it could not support pressure — particularly political pressure. The reason for this is the much-discussed garage which has been constructed underneath it. Like so many successful political positions in the past, it has undermined itself.
Generally it has been a landslide in the direction of Constitution Square. The latter actually predates Klafthmonos in political history being the place where King Otto was first forced to grant a constitution to his people in 1843. Klafthmonos, nevertheless, became the traditional square for political mass meetings shortly thereafter and remained so for generations.
It is, however, only a nickname for what is officially the Square of the 25th March. It derives from the word ‘klafthmos’ meaning weeping or lamentation.
In the nineteenth century there were even more ministries in the vicinity of the square than there are today and governments rose and fell with customary rapidity. ‘Rousfeti’, or patronage, was also well established in those days which meant that with a fall of government all the state employees — and there were vast numbers of them — lost their jobs and so they used to gather in the square to bewail their fate; hence, the Square of Lamentation.
The Curtain Rises
THE five political gatherings preceding the elections were anything but lamentations. The whole political life of Greece — like Solomon Grundy’s — expressed itself in one week. It was a grand celebration.
It opened merrily on Monday with the rally of Petros Garoufalias and his National Democratic Party. As the party of the Extreme Right it had a very limited popular base. It was attended by a few hundred supporters of the party and about 60,000 others, who came, as they made it quite clear, strictly for ‘laughs’.
The followers of Garoufalias, many of whom wore black gloves, were protected by a thick cordon of police.
They really did not need it. Though it is believed to have been the greatest anti-demostration in Greek political history, it was neither bitter nor angry. There were hecklers, of course, and a certain amount of tomato-and-yoghurt throwing, but otherwise it was good natured and satirical.
The figure of Garoufalias was looked upon by the majority as a rather pathetic ghost out of the past, making a foolish public spectacle of himself. The placards and slogans reflected this: ‘Bring Back the Trams!’ ‘Long Live Wide Trousers and Narrow Neckties!’ ‘Arise, Hilter and Behold!’ ‘Raise the Minimum Voting Age to 80!’
Garoufalias spoke a heroic 14 minutes and concluded with the statement that he was impressed by the great numbers who had gathered to hear him.
People spoke of him as ‘one of those professional politicians who never knows when his time is up’, or compared him to ‘the senile old doctor who, when he sits down, takes the pulse of his own chair’.
Garoufalias was to speak later in the week in Piraeus. This plan failed to mature after the Athens rally. In all, it was partly a tragi-comedy and partly a farcical curtain-raiser.
Act One: Exposition
ON Tuesday the drama began in earnest. The rally of the Centre Union — New Political Forces took place in Omonia Square. It was the only rally to take place there.
It was an enormous gathering, packing the square and spilling out into the adjacent streets under a forest of banners.
In light of the drama’s conclusion, however, it might be well to observe that Omonia is really not a square but a circle, not so much a meeting place as a crossroads. It also has a hole in the centre of it. Though five avenues lead into Omonia, it can be said with equal truth that five avenues lead out of it.
George Mavros was the only speaker and he was listened to with enthusiastic respect. His words on education and international affairs were particularly well-received. Of all the week’s speeches, his gave the strongest impression that there were specific issues to discuss. The favoured slogans were ‘Give the Junta to the People’ and ‘Forward into Europe’.
A huge replica of a mortar and pestle had been hoisted into the air with a banner reading ‘The People Hold the Pestle!’ It should be made clear that goudi, the Greek word for ‘mortar’, is also the name of that area in Athens where several notorious political executions took place in the past.
Though the crowd was strongly represented by the professional and solid middle classes, it was also in a cheerful mood. There was much laughter and the music by Theodorakis, accompanied by three drilling machines tearing up a piece of pavement and several noisy generators there to enforce the electrical supply for the floodlights, added to the happy bedlam. In retrospect, there was a noticeable lack of cohesion when the gathering broke up and drifted off into different directions. Indeed, the only post-rally camaraderie was in the crowd that dispersed up Panepistimiou. Here, before the Panhellenic Social Party headquarters, there were ardent cries of ‘We will unite in Parliament!’ and further on, in front of the United Left headquarters, the crowd stopped and applauded. It was as if the Centre, in its euphoria, had forgotten to unite….
Act Two: Fiesta
WEDNESDAY evening was the Great Glendi of the United Left. Though the leftist party EDA had been legitimate in the years before 1967, for the Communist elements it was the first legal gathering in twenty-seven years. There were lots of people and perfect organization. There were balloons. There was singing. There was music. There was kefi.
The principal speaker was the highly esteemed Ilias Iliou. Far from making any personal attacks, he made it clear that the Left had accepted its newly gained freedom. In artistic excellence it was certainly the high point of the week. Mikis Theodorakis and the poets Varnalis and Ritsos led a long list of the celebrated. The speeches were moderate, there were few red flags and even fewer hammers and sickles. It was a highly respectable looking gathering of people, even bourgeois, mainly due to the fact, perhaps, that the ranks of Kou-Kou-Ess (Communist Party, Interior) and Kou-Kou-Ex (Communist Party, Exterior) had been greatly swollen by the adherents of that new social phenomenon, Kou-kou-chic.
Whatever the reason, of all the week’s political meetings, it seemed the most joyous, the most united and showed the greatest esprit de corps.
Act Three: Melodrama
ANDREAS Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist Party gathered on Thursday. It was a day also memorable for its afternoon earthquakes. At first it was rumoured about town that the epicentre of these lay in the vicinity of the First Cemetery of Athens, and that the Grand Old Man (George Papandreou) was sending out a Commandment to his People. Local seismologists, however, could not decipher its meaning, nor even whether it was angry or approving.
Notwithstanding, the followers of PA.SO.Κ gathered with great fervour — and without neckties — at eight o’clock in Constitution Square. The favourite epithet ‘maverick’ was rather hard to brand on Andreas Papandreou that evening, surrounded as he was by tens of thousands of young followers.
In comparison, the meeting of the United Left the night before had been moderate. At this rally there were personal attacks on political figures which were rapturously received by the crowd. There was a radical atmosphere and the speeches as well as the slogans were adjusted to the young. The latter was a seriously-engaged, passionate and idealistic group — so idealistic, in fact, that a pedlar selling nuts was upbraided by an intent young woman for catering to the consumer society.
The hysterical enthusiasm that greeted every statement of Papandreou, it was later felt by some, not only scared away people from the centre of the square that evening, but also scared them away from the Centre Union in Sunday’s vote.
There were observers present who were relieved to note that many in the crowd were too young to vote and others who remembered that the young grow up quickly and nowadays do not easily change their minds. Finally, there were many who, if they disapproved of Papandreou’s manner, felt that he had important and justifiable things to say, and that his party was a welcome, realistic and necessary part of the country’s overall political opinion.
Grand Finale
ON Friday night, New Democracy put on an extravaganza and gave the country a lesson in Son et Lumiere. There were not only firecrackers, there were fireworks. There were not merely balloons, there was confetti. A helicopter let loose cloudbursts of leaflets; flocks of doves soared up to meet them.
Constantine Karamanlis’ appearance on the second storey balcony was greeted by the crowd like the Second Coming. ‘You brought me. If you are not going to give me your vote, why did you bring me?’ he cried. The crowd roared approval. It was the most rhetorical of questions. Never were the balconies of the G. B. and the King George so packed with elegant well-wishers. In some peripheral areas the loud speakers crackled badly. ‘It doesn’t matter what he says,’ exclaimed a well-dressed middle-aged man, ‘he’s got my vote,’ and everyone around him seemed to agree. It was remarked that the Prime Minister’s manner in Constitution Square was like that of a prince inviting the people into his palace. If this was so, the people certainly seemed to feel at home.
Limbo…
FRIDAY. Midnight. Constitution Square. The leaflets have settled. The doves have flown. A small but vociferous group is still shouting outside the New Democracy headquarters. Yet the square, without its expanses of cafe chairs and tables looks larger and emptier than ever.
Street cleaning vehicles at the foot of the square heap up mountains of paper. From a distance they look like giant plows clearing away snow drifts. Street-sweepers doggedly brush up the litter on the pavements. It’s been as hard a week on them as it’s been on the politicians. Coils of wiring are being stored into lorries: OTE and DEI have disconnected.
Five nights of celebration are over. Most have gone home. Many, however, have remembered. They have gone over to the Polytechnic, when all the shouting has stopped, to pin up a small spray of flowers on the wrought-iron fence.
Saturday. All the political headquarters are packing up and vacating their offices. The familiar red-on-white ‘To Let’ signs are being pasted up again. The upper floors of the old Prappas Building in Omonia, headquarters of the Centre Union and unoccupied for years, are empty again.
Over one hundred thousand leave the city to vote in their home towns. These are the eterodimotes, residents in Athens but still registered voters in their former home towns. Among them are political hopefuls who feel they may have a better chance finding constituents in a smaller world than that found in the diversity and anonymity of an Athens crowd. In America such candidates are disparagingly referred to as ‘carpet-baggers’, but in Greece it is still respectable and traditional. Altogether, it is the biggest exodus from Athens since the General Mobilization back in July — and a great deal happier.
For the rest, however, it is like a Saturday in Holy Week, a day in limbo. Driving in Athens is difficult. It is not that people are rude or impatient or reckless. It’s as if the drivers are not sure where they are going But the numbers of flowers on the fences of the Polytechnic are growing. They proliferate.
…And Ressurection
SUNDAY. Election Day. Very quiet. Very orderly. The armed soldier standing by the door of the school or kafenion serving as a polling station, looks out of place. Even he seems to feel it. Most people have voted early and by afternoon there is almost no one left.
But by the time the polling stations close, the fences of the Polytechnic have become fantastic floral walls made up of innumerable small bouquets. It is an astonishing sight.
From the bars of the front gate, a painting hangs. It depicts the figure of a young man with closed eyes lying on the ground. In his arms that lie gently folded across his naked chest, he holds seven small red flowers. In the background on either side of him are two trees laden with fruit. At centre two figures hover over him in space, holding between them a small green wreath…
Has the voter matured? This had been one of the most repeated questions of the campaign. If he has, it may be due in part to his memory of those from whom, a year ago, maturity was forever denied. Those young — who fought and died — are already infinitely older than the new democracy.
