Greek Communists Hope Sunday’s Election Will Lead to Kingmaker Role

Greece’s small but influential Communist Party confidently looked forward to a role as kingmaker in the next government as it wound up its election campaign Wednesday with a massive public rally in Athens’ Constitution Square.

Speaking through an amplifying system loud enough to be heard in all of downtown Athens, the party’s fiery 71-year-old leader, Kharilaos Florakis, forecast that an “overwhelming majority” of the votes will be shared by Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist movement, commonly called PASOK, and the Communists.

Greeks go to the polls Sunday in what most analysts say is a close contest between Socialists and the center-right New Democracy Party of Constantine Mitsotakis.

Although opinion polls suggest that Papandreou’s party will lead New Democracy by a small margin, neither party is expected to win an absolute parliamentary majority such as the Socialists now enjoy.

15% of Vote Expected

Florakis’ Moscow-oriented Communist Party and a smaller Eurocommunist group, called the Communist Party of the Interior, are expected to win a total of about 15% of Sunday’s vote, leaving the two major parties with about 40% each and no clear mandate to govern.

Thus, if he is to retain power, Papandreou may be forced to seek the support of the Communists in forming a government.

It would be only the second major inroad by a Moscow-line Communist Party in a Western European government. Communists were included in the first Cabinet of French President Francois Mitterrand, but the Communists later resigned.

Both Papandreou and Florakis have so far handled the question of a possible coalition gingerly. The prime minister told reporters a week ago that “it would not be healthy” to Greek political life for such a minority party to play a kingmaker role but he did not rule out the possibility.

Florakis, a Communist brigade commander during the 1944-49 Greek civil war who subsequently spent 17 years in prison, said his party would join a Socialist government only if a joint program could be worked out.

” The KKE (Communist Party) won’t join a government unless a common program is agreed on which provides the necessary direction for change,” he said.

In an interview Wednesday, one of Florakis’ Politburo colleagues, former maritime union leader Tony Ambatielos, spelled out the Communist Party’s price for post-election cooperation.

“The (Papandreou) government will not have to change radically but it must take steps to open the doors to the big changes that people asked of it in 1981,” Ambatielos said.

NATO Withdrawal Sought

He said the Communists want Greece first to abandon its military role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, then to pull out of the alliance entirely and to “start the machinery to get Greece out of the European Economic Community.”

In addition, he said, procedures must begin to remove U.S. military bases as well as the Greece-based transmitter of the Voice of America.

“We’re not a dogmatic party,” Ambatielos said. “We are realistic and open to discussion. If we can agree on these principles, we won’t ask for ministerial posts in the government.”

Papandreou won power in 1981 by promising radical changes, including the major disengagement with America and the West that the Communists are calling for today. During almost four years in office, the mercurial prime minister has carefully avoided fulfilling his go-it-alone pledges.

In recent interviews and public statements he has said that if he retains power, his next term in office will be less stormy and that Greece’s relations with the United States and Western European governments will enter “calmer seas.”

While they are distinctly in the minority, the Communists have steadily gained strength here since they were legalized by then-Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis in 1974. The Moscow-leaning Communists won 10.9% of the vote and the Eurocommunists 1.3% in their first electoral venture in 1981. In last year’s elections for the European Parliament, they advanced, respectively, to 11.64% and 3.42% of the Greek vote and are expected to make further gains Sunday.

Politburo member Ambatielos said the Communists hope for 18 to 20 seats in the new 300-member Parliament, a gain from their present 13. The Socialists have 165 seats in the outgoing Parliament and New Democracy 112, with the remainder held by independents.