www.thetimes.co.uk
The new Greek Prime Minister has ended 20 years of left-wing rule and beaten off the threat form a rival young pretender. But normal hostilities can only resume post-Olympics
AS IF this week’s general election and a new Prime Minister were not enough for one year, the people of Athens must now steel themselves for the only competition in Greece 2004 in which anyone else in the world is interested. Their Olympic Games — long demanded, now almost dreaded — are getting closer with ghastly speed.
Imagine what it must be like this morning to be the new 47-year-old conservative Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, the youngest in his country’s history. After a lifetime of expectation, you get the keys to Maximou Mansion, the self-consciously suburban villa next door to the massive old royal palace. After almost all of the past 20 years in opposition, your party looks forward to the sweet smell of payback time, to summiteering in the EU, to doing down the Left and the Turks, to responsibility at last.
Instead your big worry is whether there is a roof yet on the national swimming pool, why mud is everywhere more in evidence than marble, and why no one is buying tickets for beach volleyball. There is a challenge by official prostitutes against cheating by foreign competitors, questions (from tour company lobbyists) about why the city is still full of stray wolfhounds, questions (from animal welfarists) about whether the wolfhounds are being sytematically liquidated and a question (Answer Needed This Day) about Awacs teams to outwit al-Qaeda. The synchronised swimming team, which posed with your opponent in a campaign photo-op, is now worried about its training facilities. Wild winds are more threatening to rowers on the new Marathon water complex than the ancient Persians ever were.
Worse, everything must be done in a spirit of unity with one’s political opponents. Otherwise the whole “national reawakening” could still end in catastrophe. During the campaign a top man in Karamanlis’s New Democracy party spoke of culling 10,000 socialist advisers from the bloated Greek bureaucracy. This was seen as a gaffe that would galvanise the Left against a rightist “pogrom of jobs”.
Like all the best gaffes, it betrayed what Karamanlis would like to do — but not yet.
Although modern Greece has been built (and in many places left unbuilt) by an antique system of exchanging votes for government salaries, only a few figures at the top of the Olympic organisations can be sent home straight away. Until the last ball is volleyed and the last swim is synchronised, enemies must keep their enmity under wraps.
The battle that Greek politicians most cared about ended on Sunday night with almost no one in the rest of the world taking any notice.
The Athenian political casino once had some of the best-watched tables in the West. Cold War Greece was the place for high-stakes gamblers on coups and dictatorships, good and bad kings, irredentist obsessives, bawling anti-Americanism and slush funds to keep everyone in their place.
The EU and the euro — supported by Blairite handbooks on how to win elections — have ended most of that. The two contenders to be the next Prime Minister spent the campaign like rival soap brands struggling for advantage in a carefully managed marketplace. Both men had big, established product names. Both knew that those names were a hindrance as well as a help, and that they must plaster “new” and “ changed” and “improved” over their products if their fellow Greeks were to go out and buy.
George Papandreou, the 51-year-old Pasok leader, boasted a father and grandfather who had held the job before him. Costas Karamanlis, though merely the nephew of a former Prime Minister, was a potent reminder of that uncle, Constantine Karamanlis, who led Greeks back to the ballot box in 1974 after the Colonels fell. Without brand loyalty neither man would have risen so far. Without promoting his preparedness to break with the past, each knew that he would lose.
This was not just the usual story of modern media politics. This was the sixth time the two names had been against each other. This was personal. This was family. This was Greek.
For George Papandreou the task was always the harder. His father, Andreas, was the founder of the Pasok party, the domineering anti-American who brought the Left to power in 1981 and, even during his dying days under the sway of a young former air hostess and her soothsayers, kept that power by mafioso means for which the party is still feared. In the past eight years, with Andreas Papandreou dead and the country under the control of the Germanic accountant Costas Simitis, there has been change within Pasok — but less even than Neil Kinnock brought to the British Labour Party. A would-be Blair became leader only a month ago.
Old Pasok, whose symbol of a dark-green jagged sun still dominated the final election rallies, did not much care for “young George” Papandreou. The “old man” had “spiritual sons” and old partners-in-graft who thought — and still think — they could do a better job.
Only when the nephew of the right-wing Karamanlis clan looked as though he would easily win election victory did the party bosses grit their teeth and turn to their magic brand name.
They knew that George Papandreou was an American-educated fitness fanatic whose first language was English and whose Greek vocabulary would benefit from a few years back at school. They knew that he made them look old. But if a lean face and a gym membership were needed to symbolise change, so be it. His personal story, particularly the bit where he had a soldier’s gun at his head to get his father to go quietly to a junta jail, was excellent for the campaign biopic. What no one had anticipated was that he would immediately start sacking his father’s old guard for the sort of land deals that had long funded the Pasok machine; nor that he would take a page straight from the new Labour book and offer himself for direct election by party members.
Adapting new Labour orthodoxies for Greece needed care, however. No “big idea” could be allowed, since the phrase had been used before — by Greeks who wanted to rule the whole Greek-speaking world from their real capital, Constantinople. Nor was the “third way” on offer: the Colonels had liked to see themselves as the third Greek way, successors to ancient Athens and Byzantium. Experiments with “red roses” and new names were patchy.
For the first two weeks Papandreou barely mentioned the word Pasok. The sun symbol, which looks more like a knuckle-duster than an optimistic dawn, wasupdated with a new “contemporary range” of pale jasmine and spring-leaf swirls. But he had trouble “switching negative to mobilise his base” (as his aides put it), and as soon as the polls had closed it was clear that Karamanlis had headed smoothly to a 6 per cent lead, a much bigger than expected victory.
For political professionals this was a fascinating contest. Papandreou had been attempting to do in weeks what Tony Blair did in years. At the final Pasok rally for the rural Peloponnese, appropriately close to the ancient Games site of Olympia, both the new and the old emblems flew high over the packed market square of Pirgos. The son did cry the name of his father — and of his grandfather, the George Papandreou who negotiated with Churchill and won the family ’s first victory over the Karamanlises in 1963. The crowd’s bared-teeth rage against the Right became a roar at every veiled reference to the junta which followed so soon after that triumph.
The passion was a reminder of politics before the TV age. Children waved flags at every Papandreou word. Any serious woman of old Pasok had to have a huge battle banner in each hand. After smoke bombs and violent fireworks the square seemed like a riot scene terminated by tear gas. But even gas canisters have their part in modern media management. Both sides used them for concealing any gaps in the crowd from the TV cameras.
There were no gaps at Pirgos. The Pasokenthusiast police chief proclaimed that the turnout of more than 15,000 exceeded even the past great triumph of Andreas in the town in 1981. In Athens on the same Thursday night more than 200,000 came out in freezing rain to hear Karamanlis, with a similar number again for Papandreou on Friday.
Giant rallies, possible ONLY because of old disciplinarians in both parties, suggest that nothing much has changed in Greek politics. But both leaders spoke all the modern mantras of change, of inclusion, of technology, of competition and zero tolerance of corruption.
Papandreou delivered a stern lecture to the Peloponnesian farmers against living in the past — even though it was the past that won him his most rousing screams of homage.
Karamanlis said that the era of “jobs for the kids” was over: and whether or not his jobseeking backers thought he was being sincere, the voters seem to have done so.
When Papandreou’s Peloponnese speech was over, his departing battle bus was blocked by anguished supporters in a wall of stiff black leather jackets, a walking DFS furniture showroom.
But even as he waved to this highly “mobilised” part of the Pasok base, he was promising his aides inside the bus that the battle to transform his party had barely begun. It was like Blair with the unions ten years ago. He claimed that the race was “neck and neck” but even then he seemed to sense that he had run out of time.
Papandreou can now carry out his modernisations without the duty of governing the country too. There may be benefits in that, as some of his supporters concede. But there are risks too. How Pasok will fare now that its leader no longer has even the possibility of mass patronage will not be clear until the Olympic visitors have come and gone.
Costas Karamanlis has been a more cautious moderniser since he took over his party in 1997. He has abandoned his party’s more Thatcherite economic rhetoric of the 1990s and aimed for a coalition of the dissatisfied, carefully crafting positions to appeal across Right and Left to those who feel that 20 years of Pasok have not brought the benefits they deserve. His chief charge against Papandreou was that he is all style and no substance, that the atmosphere in relations with Turkey may have improved but the real disputes remain, that he talked about reform of social security but could not deliver reform. The anti-Blair campaign guide has travelled just as reliably as the Blair model itself.
While Papandreou is surrounded by fellow American-trained aides (“the Bostonians”, as the party’s John Prescotts and Robin Cooks see them), the new Prime Minister is more often seen, like a young crown prince, in the comfortable company of his party elders. Karamanlis, too, is American-educated and claims to spend spare time in the gym. But no one criticises his Greek grammar, and his physique suggests a less than fanatical approach to the treadmill.
Until the Olympic Games are over, Karamanlis is unlikely to have much chance to strengthen his heart rate. He is more likely to miss a beat or two. Although yesterday he put the UN deal over Cyprus high on his agenda, and there is a looming problem over who should be his President and have the palace next door, the first most important visitor will be the Olympics boss, Jacques Rogge, who arrives on Saturday.
Greeks pride themselves on a relaxed approach to deadlines. Anyone who arrives on time for anything here is said to be on “British time”.
Everything, the Olympians will be told as they step over unplanted trees on the way to unroofed stadia, will be ready when it needs to be ready. This morning the new Prime Minister will learn from the files whether that promise, any more than any other promises from the campaign trail, has a chance of being fulfilled.
The new Greek Prime Minister has ended 20 years of left-wing rule and beaten off the threat form a rival young pretender. But normal hostilities can only resume post-Olympics
AS IF this week’s general election and a new Prime Minister were not enough for one year, the people of Athens must now steel themselves for the only competition in Greece 2004 in which anyone else in the world is interested. Their Olympic Games — long demanded, now almost dreaded — are getting closer with ghastly speed.
Imagine what it must be like this morning to be the new 47-year-old conservative Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, the youngest in his country’s history. After a lifetime of expectation, you get the keys to Maximou Mansion, the self-consciously suburban villa next door to the massive old royal palace. After almost all of the past 20 years in opposition, your party looks forward to the sweet smell of payback time, to summiteering in the EU, to doing down the Left and the Turks, to responsibility at last.
Instead your big worry is whether there is a roof yet on the national swimming pool, why mud is everywhere more in evidence than marble, and why no one is buying tickets for beach volleyball. There is a challenge by official prostitutes against cheating by foreign competitors, questions (from tour company lobbyists) about why the city is still full of stray wolfhounds, questions (from animal welfarists) about whether the wolfhounds are being sytematically liquidated and a question (Answer Needed This Day) about Awacs teams to outwit al-Qaeda. The synchronised swimming team, which posed with your opponent in a campaign photo-op, is now worried about its training facilities. Wild winds are more threatening to rowers on the new Marathon water complex than the ancient Persians ever were.
Worse, everything must be done in a spirit of unity with one’s political opponents. Otherwise the whole “national reawakening” could still end in catastrophe. During the campaign a top man in Karamanlis’s New Democracy party spoke of culling 10,000 socialist advisers from the bloated Greek bureaucracy. This was seen as a gaffe that would galvanise the Left against a rightist “pogrom of jobs”.
Like all the best gaffes, it betrayed what Karamanlis would like to do — but not yet.
Although modern Greece has been built (and in many places left unbuilt) by an antique system of exchanging votes for government salaries, only a few figures at the top of the Olympic organisations can be sent home straight away. Until the last ball is volleyed and the last swim is synchronised, enemies must keep their enmity under wraps.
The battle that Greek politicians most cared about ended on Sunday night with almost no one in the rest of the world taking any notice.
The Athenian political casino once had some of the best-watched tables in the West. Cold War Greece was the place for high-stakes gamblers on coups and dictatorships, good and bad kings, irredentist obsessives, bawling anti-Americanism and slush funds to keep everyone in their place.
The EU and the euro — supported by Blairite handbooks on how to win elections — have ended most of that. The two contenders to be the next Prime Minister spent the campaign like rival soap brands struggling for advantage in a carefully managed marketplace. Both men had big, established product names. Both knew that those names were a hindrance as well as a help, and that they must plaster “new” and “ changed” and “improved” over their products if their fellow Greeks were to go out and buy.
George Papandreou, the 51-year-old Pasok leader, boasted a father and grandfather who had held the job before him. Costas Karamanlis, though merely the nephew of a former Prime Minister, was a potent reminder of that uncle, Constantine Karamanlis, who led Greeks back to the ballot box in 1974 after the Colonels fell. Without brand loyalty neither man would have risen so far. Without promoting his preparedness to break with the past, each knew that he would lose.
This was not just the usual story of modern media politics. This was the sixth time the two names had been against each other. This was personal. This was family. This was Greek.
For George Papandreou the task was always the harder. His father, Andreas, was the founder of the Pasok party, the domineering anti-American who brought the Left to power in 1981 and, even during his dying days under the sway of a young former air hostess and her soothsayers, kept that power by mafioso means for which the party is still feared. In the past eight years, with Andreas Papandreou dead and the country under the control of the Germanic accountant Costas Simitis, there has been change within Pasok — but less even than Neil Kinnock brought to the British Labour Party. A would-be Blair became leader only a month ago.
Old Pasok, whose symbol of a dark-green jagged sun still dominated the final election rallies, did not much care for “young George” Papandreou. The “old man” had “spiritual sons” and old partners-in-graft who thought — and still think — they could do a better job.
Only when the nephew of the right-wing Karamanlis clan looked as though he would easily win election victory did the party bosses grit their teeth and turn to their magic brand name.
They knew that George Papandreou was an American-educated fitness fanatic whose first language was English and whose Greek vocabulary would benefit from a few years back at school. They knew that he made them look old. But if a lean face and a gym membership were needed to symbolise change, so be it. His personal story, particularly the bit where he had a soldier’s gun at his head to get his father to go quietly to a junta jail, was excellent for the campaign biopic. What no one had anticipated was that he would immediately start sacking his father’s old guard for the sort of land deals that had long funded the Pasok machine; nor that he would take a page straight from the new Labour book and offer himself for direct election by party members.
Adapting new Labour orthodoxies for Greece needed care, however. No “big idea” could be allowed, since the phrase had been used before — by Greeks who wanted to rule the whole Greek-speaking world from their real capital, Constantinople. Nor was the “third way” on offer: the Colonels had liked to see themselves as the third Greek way, successors to ancient Athens and Byzantium. Experiments with “red roses” and new names were patchy.
For the first two weeks Papandreou barely mentioned the word Pasok. The sun symbol, which looks more like a knuckle-duster than an optimistic dawn, wasupdated with a new “contemporary range” of pale jasmine and spring-leaf swirls. But he had trouble “switching negative to mobilise his base” (as his aides put it), and as soon as the polls had closed it was clear that Karamanlis had headed smoothly to a 6 per cent lead, a much bigger than expected victory.
For political professionals this was a fascinating contest. Papandreou had been attempting to do in weeks what Tony Blair did in years. At the final Pasok rally for the rural Peloponnese, appropriately close to the ancient Games site of Olympia, both the new and the old emblems flew high over the packed market square of Pirgos. The son did cry the name of his father — and of his grandfather, the George Papandreou who negotiated with Churchill and won the family ’s first victory over the Karamanlises in 1963. The crowd’s bared-teeth rage against the Right became a roar at every veiled reference to the junta which followed so soon after that triumph.
The passion was a reminder of politics before the TV age. Children waved flags at every Papandreou word. Any serious woman of old Pasok had to have a huge battle banner in each hand. After smoke bombs and violent fireworks the square seemed like a riot scene terminated by tear gas. But even gas canisters have their part in modern media management. Both sides used them for concealing any gaps in the crowd from the TV cameras.
There were no gaps at Pirgos. The Pasokenthusiast police chief proclaimed that the turnout of more than 15,000 exceeded even the past great triumph of Andreas in the town in 1981. In Athens on the same Thursday night more than 200,000 came out in freezing rain to hear Karamanlis, with a similar number again for Papandreou on Friday.
Giant rallies, possible ONLY because of old disciplinarians in both parties, suggest that nothing much has changed in Greek politics. But both leaders spoke all the modern mantras of change, of inclusion, of technology, of competition and zero tolerance of corruption.
Papandreou delivered a stern lecture to the Peloponnesian farmers against living in the past — even though it was the past that won him his most rousing screams of homage.
Karamanlis said that the era of “jobs for the kids” was over: and whether or not his jobseeking backers thought he was being sincere, the voters seem to have done so.
When Papandreou’s Peloponnese speech was over, his departing battle bus was blocked by anguished supporters in a wall of stiff black leather jackets, a walking DFS furniture showroom.
But even as he waved to this highly “mobilised” part of the Pasok base, he was promising his aides inside the bus that the battle to transform his party had barely begun. It was like Blair with the unions ten years ago. He claimed that the race was “neck and neck” but even then he seemed to sense that he had run out of time.
Papandreou can now carry out his modernisations without the duty of governing the country too. There may be benefits in that, as some of his supporters concede. But there are risks too. How Pasok will fare now that its leader no longer has even the possibility of mass patronage will not be clear until the Olympic visitors have come and gone.
Costas Karamanlis has been a more cautious moderniser since he took over his party in 1997. He has abandoned his party’s more Thatcherite economic rhetoric of the 1990s and aimed for a coalition of the dissatisfied, carefully crafting positions to appeal across Right and Left to those who feel that 20 years of Pasok have not brought the benefits they deserve. His chief charge against Papandreou was that he is all style and no substance, that the atmosphere in relations with Turkey may have improved but the real disputes remain, that he talked about reform of social security but could not deliver reform. The anti-Blair campaign guide has travelled just as reliably as the Blair model itself.
While Papandreou is surrounded by fellow American-trained aides (“the Bostonians”, as the party’s John Prescotts and Robin Cooks see them), the new Prime Minister is more often seen, like a young crown prince, in the comfortable company of his party elders. Karamanlis, too, is American-educated and claims to spend spare time in the gym. But no one criticises his Greek grammar, and his physique suggests a less than fanatical approach to the treadmill.
Until the Olympic Games are over, Karamanlis is unlikely to have much chance to strengthen his heart rate. He is more likely to miss a beat or two. Although yesterday he put the UN deal over Cyprus high on his agenda, and there is a looming problem over who should be his President and have the palace next door, the first most important visitor will be the Olympics boss, Jacques Rogge, who arrives on Saturday.
Greeks pride themselves on a relaxed approach to deadlines. Anyone who arrives on time for anything here is said to be on “British time”.
Everything, the Olympians will be told as they step over unplanted trees on the way to unroofed stadia, will be ready when it needs to be ready. This morning the new Prime Minister will learn from the files whether that promise, any more than any other promises from the campaign trail, has a chance of being fulfilled.
