Wall Street Journal

January 13, 2004

It's Goodbye Zorba,
Hello Olympics in Greece

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis has called a parliamentary election for March 7. However it turns out, Greek politics are likely to take a turn for the better. A new generation of leaders has entered the lists.

This shows what can happen when a small country -- even one as politically volatile as Greece -- gains acceptance in the larger world community and is challenged to adopt higher standards. In recent years, Greece has taken an increasingly responsible role in both the European Union and NATO. This year, it will be under even more intense international scrutiny when it plays host in August to the summer Olympics. The Olympic Games were revived in Greece in 1896 largely through the efforts of young Pierre de Coubertin, some 1,500 years after they were abolished by the Romans. Naturally, Greece, the birthplace of Western civilization and the originator of the games three millennia ago, wants to make a good impression.

Because of the inglorious course of Greek history since its heyday, making a good impression has special importance to the Greeks. Greece was subdued first by the Romans. Later, as a strategic corner of the Byzantine empire, it was under constant attack from raiders and invaders. The Venetians held it in thrall for a time. For nearly four centuries, until independence in 1829, it was ruled by the Ottoman Turks.

Its tenuous independence was lost again in World War II, when it was occupied by the Nazis. After the war, the communists who had fought the Nazis tried to take over with the help of the Soviets. That effort, incidentally, prompted the 1947 "Truman Doctrine" of communist containment, usually regarded as the beginning of the Cold War. With U.S. help, democratic forces finally subdued the communists in 1949, but only after a very nasty civil war, the scars of which remain. Indeed, the Greek Communist Party itself still exists, spending most of its time carping at democratic governments.

Mr. Simitis said he will remain prime minister until the election but will give up leadership of Pasok, the socialist party that itself has had a checkered career in ruling the country in all but three of the last 23 years. This will make way for the leadership to go to 51-year-old George Papandreou, currently foreign minister. Mr. Papandreou will try to give Pasok a good scrubbing, which it badly needs, before the election.

The opposition New Democracy party, led by 47-year-old Costas Karamanlis, has bested Pasok by as much as a 10-point margin in opinion polls leading up to the announcement by Mr. Simitis. Mr. Karamanlis, who I spoke to by phone in Athens last week, attributes the weakness of Pasok to corruption born out of being too long in power. "Being in power 20 years breeds arrogance," he says.

Pasok was organized in 1974 by a man who would have been hard to match for arrogance, Andreas Georgios Papandreou. He was George Papandreou's father and the son of yet another prime minister, Georgios. Andreas, a Trotskyite who once taught, appropriately, at Berkeley, gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1963 to return to Greece and serve in his father's government. His radicalism helped bring down the government and contributed to the 1967 military coup.

But he was undaunted. In 1981, seven years after the collapse of the military government, Andreas led Pasok to a major victory, beginning the party's long reign. Andreas achieved his victory partly through anti-American screeds and a threat to pull out of NATO, which he never carried out. He died in 1996. By good fortune, Greece got a more responsible leader, Mr. Simitis, who began the process of reform. The socialist, anti-American rhetoric of Pasok politicians continued, even while Mr. Simitis was cooperating with U.S. policy on many touchy issues. Importantly, Mr. Simitis and George Papandreou began to mend fences with Turkey, yet another object of hatred in the Greek political culture.

The Simitis government finally came to grips with the "November 17" terrorist group, which had operated behind the scenes in Greece for years, some say with high-level protection. Mr. Karamanlis claims, however, that New Democracy helped make this possible by voting for a government anti-terrorism law that many Pasok politicians opposed.

George Papandreou, who will fight the election on Pasok's behalf, bears little resemblance to his fire-breathing, left-wing father. He is calm and thoughtful. He was born in the U.S. during his father's sojourn as a professor in exile and is very much attuned to the modern world. His opponent, Mr. Karamanlis, is also descended from a political dynasty, but is similarly modern, having won an advanced degree from the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. which specializes in turning out diplomats.

Aside from the corruption issue, Mr. Karamanlis will try to exploit the failures of economic policy under Pasok, mainly the inflation and 9% unemployment. He says he will follow the Irish example in trying to make Greece a place more hospitable to foreign investment through reduced taxes and regulation. He complains that so-called "privatizations" under Pasok weren't real because the government never relinquished control, and promises true privatizations in transport, banking and energy.

The two relatively young politicians who will face off in March will be trying to change a political culture that in the past has been one of the most reactionary in Europe. The film "Zorba the Greek" captured the insularity and sometime cruelty of a society that has clung to the memory of classical glory through centuries of humiliation. Mikis Theodorakis, the renowned composer who wrote the musical score for Zorba, is a living example of that insularity, not to mention the anti-Americanism that infuses Greece like few other places on earth.

But Greece, a sunlit museum that attracts 5 million tourists a year, now has higher aspirations. Most importantly, it wants to prove that it can organize the 2004 Olympic Games in a way that will reflect the glories of its past. Whoever wins in March, Mr. Karamanlis or Mr. Papandreou, will have the opportunity to infuse Greece with a new spirit that has been a long time in coming.

ABOUT GEORGE MELLOAN

George Melloan is the Journal's Deputy Editor, International. He began writing "Global View" in 1990, when he took over responsibilities for the overseas pages after 17 years as deputy editor in New York. During the first five years of his present assignment he was based in Brussels, traveling extensively from there to write about such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet empire and the collapse of the Japan's stock market and real estate bubble. He returned to New York in 1994.

Mr. Melloan invites comments to george.melloan@wsj.com¹.