Sloane Elliott

“The astonishing events which characterize the latest developments in our country create the impression that Greece has been transformed into an enormous madhouse.”

Almost every day for the last few months the government spokesman has been claiming that the criticisms of opposition leaders “are figments of their imagination.”

Last year they thought they had found the Colossus of Rhodes, but they were wrong.

One month after it had been announced that prime minister Papandreou had been hastily dispatch¬ed to London for surgery, not only had the operation not taken place, there was not even a clear picture of the premier’s medical condition.

The gala benefit raising funds for the new Acropolis Museum called “The Stars Shine for the Acropolis” took place at the Odeon of Herod Atticus on August 3.

It would be nice this August, at the very peak of the tourist season, to sing the praises of Greece for all the wonderful things it offers in almost careless abandon: its physical beauty, its dazzling seas, its inspiring monuments and, above all, what an old Murray guide once described as its “stubborn, but often sympathetic, inhabitants”.

The fanfare which accompanied the recent visits of Turgut Ozal and Elizabeth Taylor emphasized the importance given to public relations today and how it’s become almost an end in itself.

The spirit of Davos, conceived last January by the prime ministers of Greece and Turkey in an anteroom of a deluxe hotel at the Swiss resort made famous by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain got its first eyeball-to-eyeball test in hardcore Greek reality when Bedreddin Dalan, mayor of Istanbul, paid a five-day visit to Athens early last month.

As in many other Western countries the national holiday here, celebrated on March 25, has been reduced mostly to a pageant for children during which boys and girls, dressed up as tsoliades and Amalias, recite in poetry the bold feats of Markos Botsaris in monotone squeaks to the delight of their parents.

After every one of its crimes, the ability of members of the November 17 terrorist organization to vanish blithely into thin air, has aroused the awe, and even the suspicion, of the public.