A foreigner who aspires to become a Greek citizen (without going so far as to marry one) will find a path torturously strewn with red tape, judicial decisions and indecisions, appeals and reappeals, examinations and cross-examinations.
In the early hours of March 12, a bomb hidden in a confessional rocked the Athens Metropolitan Cathedral, causing damage estimated at well above a million drachmas.
After weeks of speculation concerning the anticipated civil marriage bill and whether the government by making it obligatory would reduce a church marriage to a purely ceremonial act, the draft of the new law tabled before Parliament on February 16 proposed that both civil and church marriages be treated with equal validity before the law.
On the night before Christmas when not a creature was stirring in the House of Parliament because of the holiday recess, civil servants settling down for a long winter’s nap were jolted out of their reveries by the sudden presentation of PASOK’s plan to reform the governmental bureaucracy.
In an election year, the theater season always gets off to a slow start and many plays do not open until after the campaign, but by far the best attended premiere of the 1981-82 season was the opening of Parliament on the morning of November 16.
The celebrations of National Resistance are observed by certain groups all year round, but with the Ohi Day observance held on October 28 and the Polytechnion two weeks later, the Days of Remembrance are most powerfully felt at this time of year.
Although Andreas Papandreou had been persistently calling for parliamentary elections for well over a year, it was not until September 19 that President Karamanlis decreed elections and dissolved Parliament.
While a host of political parties will officially participate in the forthcoming Greek parliamentary elections, the contest will essentially be fought by three parties: two vying for first place and the privilege of forming the new government and the third trailing behind with the hope of acting as arbiter in case of a deadlock.
In late June it had been noted that there had been surprisingly few forest fires this summer. Shortly after, however, a major fire broke out on the Cassandra finger of the Halkidiki peninsula, followed by others in Macedonia, Crete and Attica.
When Opposition leader Andreas Papandreou visited President Karamanlis in mid-July requesting that a certain day in October be set for elections, the President decided that he should like to have the consensus of other party leaders on this matter, and that these proposals be submitted in writing. If everything else changes in the preelection period, the bureaucratic method remains triumphantly the same.
