Greek Leader’s Decline Takes Center Stage : Europe: Observers view the waning days of Premier Andreas Papandreou as the end of an era. His wife’s ambitions fuel the spectacle.

In this ancient city, the final, tragicomic act of a modern political drama has begun to unfold.

The central character--as he has been for the better part of two decades in Greek politics--is Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, 76. The once-flamboyant populist firebrand, reduced by age and fading health to frailty, no longer can wield power effectively yet is unwilling to give it up.

Then there is his third wife, Dimitra, Europe’s most unlikely first lady. She is a former flight attendant who is 36 years her husband’s junior, and her recent moves to launch a political career of her own have generated a mixture of derision and some unflattering comparisons to the infamous Argentine Eva Peron.

Rounding out the cast is an array of lesser figures in Papandreou’s Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, known as Pasok. They have started jockeying for power and, for the first time, are openly challenging the wisdom of their leader’s continued rule.

But for many observers here, the drama playing itself out is more than a struggle for succession in the party that has ruled Greece for 10 of the past 14 years. These events, they say, constitute nothing less than the death throes of a political system, the beginning of the end for a democratic order that for much of this century has been characterized by strong leaders and liberal patronage.

The feeling of watershed change also is especially strong here because the main opposition party, New Democracy, is in equal disarray since its septuagenarian founder, Constantine Mitsotakis, stepped down as party leader.

“Greece has long been dominated by the politics of great personalities, but there are no obvious successors now,” said a senior European diplomat. “The old system is breaking down. Events are moving into a new phase.”

Across the political spectrum, Greek voters appear to want not just new faces but fresh, innovative ideas and modern democratic ways--where those elected play by agreed-upon rules and where institutions are more powerful than individuals.

“The main problem in Greece isn’t just the Papandreou succession,” said Stelios Perrakis, director general of the Center for Hellenic and European Studies here. “There is a crisis of the entire political system. There are no longer any real links between the political parties and the people--there is no confidence in the parties themselves.”

Certainly confidence in the aging Papandreou has waned.

It is not hard to understand why. His health, never strong after he underwent open-heart surgery in London seven years ago, has steadily deteriorated to a point where today his limited stamina has reportedly reduced his workday to a few hours. His voice, which once stirred thousands at mass rallies, is now thin and rises barely above a whisper. His gait is an unsteady shuffle. He departed one recent public event in Athens propped up by aides, in a scene that only intensified speculation about how long he can hang on--to power and to life.

“That’s the $95,000 question,” said one diplomat, who added that speculation about Papandreou’s health is so intense that it reminds him of the film “The Madness of King George”--another tale of a leader, Britain’s George III, whose illness placed his power in jeopardy.

Despite his physical deterioration, Papandreou’s mind is said to remain sound. “He’s like a computer that’s been programmed for certain tasks, including holding on to power, that can’t be switched off,” said Thanos Veremis, a professor of political history at the University of Athens and director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. “He’s an old man who just won’t let go. He’s just fading like a long summer evening.”

Papandreou rarely attends Parliament or calls Cabinet meetings. His public appearances, when they occur, are brief.

Instead, the man who preached socialism for his country has retreated to the leafy northern suburb of Ekali and the confines of a rambling, $1.5-million pink villa that he built with Dimitra.

There, amid 10 bedrooms, 16 baths and three swimming pools, the prime minister has reportedly slipped behind the protective cordon of a “kitchen cabinet” of sycophants. Greek pundits have dubbed them the avli , or court.

One Greek newspaper recently detailed a list of the avli members, including an astrologer, a television broadcaster, a beautician, a Greek Orthodox priest, a political commentator, the first lady’s three hairdressers and Georgios Lianis, Greece’s secretary of state for sports--and also Mrs. Papandreou’s cousin.

At the heart of this group is Dimitra Papandreou, who as head of the president’s private office controls access to the prime minister.

Recent policy successes--including a series of foreign affairs breakthroughs, such as an end to Greece’s crippling embargo of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and an easing of tensions with neighboring Albania--are said to have occurred largely without her husband’s involvement.

“He’s been carried along by a process more than he’s done anything himself,” a diplomat said.

It is a measure of Andreas Papandreou’s stature that, despite all this, his popularity among voters has remained strong--until this summer, when he offered the first signs that he was preparing the ground for his wife to enter politics.

The first hint of a potential change in Dimitra Papandreou’s role came in July, when the former Olympic Airways flight attendant conspicuously stepped away from her husband’s side for the first time. While the occasion--dedicating a painting at a museum in the northern town of Florina--was purely ceremonial, the array of government ministers surrounding her gave the event an added dimension.

Two weeks later, Papandreou fueled rumors, declaring, “If she wants to run for office, I will support her.”

Last month, Mrs. Papandreou made her debut in the capital, again on a ceremonial occasion--the opening of an exhibition of commemorative stamps--and again accompanied by government ministers.

The reaction to these first tentative steps has been almost universally negative, even within the Pasok party, which Papandreou founded. One Pasok lawmaker, voicing openly what many whispered privately, demanded an immediate halt to such activities.

“The lady is getting involved in politics openly and provocatively, and she has to stop this,” said legislator Kyriakos Spiuriounis.

While he was promptly thrown out of the party for his remarks, opinion polls are harder to discipline. A survey of Pasok voters published this month found that 60% of those surveyed believed that Dimitra Papandreou possesses no qualifications for public office. A poll conducted earlier this month showed the extent to which the prime minister’s own popularity has plummeted, with only 8% of those questioned calling him the best person to lead Greece.

To make matters worse, Avriani, an anti-government daily newspaper, began running decade-old photographs of the first lady--most of them showing her sunbathing topless while vacationing in the Greek isles.

And on Sept. 25, the paper offered its coup de grace : a large, front-page picture of Dimitra, reclining in a chair, wearing a bedsheet and a wistful smile. She is cradling the genital area of an unidentified man in undershorts standing next to her.

“This lady wants to be the leader of Pasok and prime minister of the country. We won’t let her,” the paper’s headline said.

Despite the swift expulsion of the outspoken Spiuriounis, grumbling about Papandreou continues within Pasok, mainly among those who believe it is time for him to pass the baton to a younger generation.

He avoided open rebellion earlier this month when the party convened to elect a new general secretary and executive board, mainly by failing to give rebels any chance to attack him. He spoke for 20 minutes, denounced what he termed “a small circle of high-level party members” as cowards and ingrates, then departed before debate could begin.

His candidates, the only ones put forward, eventually were elected.

But the resistance grew. One prominent rebel, former Finance Minister Dimitris Tsovolas, promptly resigned from the party and declared that he was forming a new political movement, while others upped the volume from within.

“Each leader has the privilege of choosing the way he will depart,” noted former Industries Minister Costas Simitis. “Andreas Papandreou chose to deny reality.”

Some observers see such open challenges from within the party as the beginning of the end for Papandreou, even if his health permits him to hang on for several more months. Others aren’t so sure.

But most agree that, once he does go, so too will pass a political era in Greece.

“It’s a historical moment,” said Constantine Angelopoulos, political writer for the Athens daily Kathimerini.

“Twenty years ago [with the end of military rule and restoration of democracy in Greece] we began a new political period with new parties and big men as leaders. Everything now shows this era is coming to an end. The old ways of ruling are no longer enough.”