Greeks Seek Political Normalcy, New Beginning as Papandreou Era Ends

Greece has endured its share of tumult since World War II, surviving civil war, military dictatorship and larger-than-life elected leaders whose personal antics often made a mockery of its democracy.

Now Greeks face another challenge: political normalcy.

If Parliament this week, as expected, formally approves a government presented by new Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, it will also signal a far larger change for one of the world’s oldest nations.

Above all, it will close the era of the flamboyant, autocratic Andreas Papandreou, the onetime UC Berkeley economics professor who dominated the Greek political landscape for the better part of two decades.

But it is also a new beginning. Simitis, 59, is a modernizer known more for his technocratic skills than his charismatic pull.

He has pledged to take Greece back into the mainstream of European affairs. He has promised to privatize bloated state-owned companies, overhaul an antiquated civil service, end cronyism, swing the Greek economy into line with those of its European Union partners and work more closely with old allies to resolve regional problems--from the Balkans to Cyprus.

“A new style, a new morale, a new direction,” Simitis summed up earlier this month after winning a vote by ruling Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) lawmakers on who would succeed the ailing Papandreou. “This will be a government of hard work to carry Greece into the 21st century.”

Tasso Mandelis, a prime ministerial aide, added: “There’s a feeling that a page has been turned. It’s a different ethos.”

An economically strong, politically cooperative Greece would bring a badly needed stabilizing influence to a part of Europe that already has more than its share of tension.

“Under this government, Greece will be a duller but more reliable partner,” declared Thanos Veremis, head of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens.

For a people weary of Papandreou’s whimsical style, his attempts to foist his onetime flight attendant wife into national politics and his narrowly focused foreign policy initiatives that often distanced Greece from its traditional Western partners, the change has generated a thinly veiled euphoria among the country’s urban, educated classes.

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This upbeat mood is mixed with a lingering sense of disbelief, both that Papandreou finally resigned nearly two months after he became incapacitated by lung and kidney failure after a bout of pneumonia, and that the PASOK party he founded and filled with so many of his sycophants managed to choose Simitis as a successor.

Veremis recalled being at the National Gallery on Jan. 18 when someone ran into the main hall and shouted that Simitis had been selected premier. “There was a gasp of excitement,” he remembered. “Then everyone started talking about how great it was. It’s good riddance to the Old Guard.”

Such rejoicing was understandable. After all, Simitis seemed to have impeccable qualifications. He studied law and economics in Germany, returned home to oppose the Greek military dictatorship that began in the late ‘60s, fled back to Germany to escape arrest, then came back in 1974 to be a founding member of PASOK.

As economics minister in the mid-1980s, he drew kudos for stabilizing the country’s finances with a successful austerity program, then resigned when Papandreou undermined it with a populist spending spree. Through much of the past year, Simitis led a small but vocal opposition to Papandreou from within the party, at one point challenging Papandreou publicly to debate rather than dictate important policies.

Such actions made him a highly popular national politician, whose appeal extends well into the ranks of the opposition conservative New Democracy party.

The only worry some Simitis supporters have about their leader’s style is that it may not be Greek enough.

“He’s an austere, methodical, systematic man,” a longtime colleague noted. “People may tire of him if there are no results quickly.”

Those around him insist he will consolidate power through success.

But as Simitis prepares to present his government’s program to Parliament on Monday, there are signs he may face major difficulties implementing his reforms, not least from within his own party.

Although chosen as prime minister by a majority of PASOK’s 167 Parliament members--mainly because they saw his popularity as the best bet to keep them in power--Simitis’ 11-vote margin of victory was hardly a landslide. Some political analysts believe as much as two-thirds of the party’s rank and file may be against him.

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Simitis got a taste of this resistance on his fourth day in office when the party’s executive committee challenged his right to convene a caucus of PASOK lawmakers--a right technically still held by the bedridden Papandreou, who has clung to the post of party president. Another prominent party figure accused Simitis of lying and breaking a pledge to consult broadly before picking his government.

The moves exemplified what one diplomat called “the shadow of the respirator”--the residual power of Papandreou as long as he remains alive and party president.

In an interview, Papandreou’s son Yeoryios, now the education minister and one of those who helped broker the hand-over of power, admitted that there are dangers of party infighting. But he insisted that his father now wants to play a conciliatory role to keep the party together, rather than turn one faction against another.

“If we are talking about a new era, this also includes my father,” the younger Papandreou said. “He wants the party to move ahead.”

Others aren’t so sure. They ask, for example, how Simitis can conduct a meaningful privatization of the national telephone company, OTE, when its chairman is PASOK’s treasurer. Or how he can streamline the civil service if it means cutting 50,000 jobs.

“He won’t be able to take big steps,” said Petros Doukas, former deputy finance minister in the last conservative government and now an Athens businessman. “He’ll have to spend a lot of time building consensus for each little move. It’s going to be a cautious government.”

Some believe that only victory in new elections, now scheduled for October 1997, will give Simitis the chance to complete the transition and let him move forward boldly on his reforms.

Whatever the new government’s fate, the end of the Papandreou era appears to doom the political ambitions he had for his controversial third wife, Dimitra, a former Olympic Airways flight attendant half his age whose nude photos in compromising poses with other men and women have been splashed across the front pages of Greek newspapers in recent months.

In an interview early this month with a soft-porn magazine, Dimitra defended her earlier sexual escapades but seemed resigned that her political career had taken a turn for the worse.

“I’m not ashamed of sunbathing nude and having five, 10 or 15 lovers,” she said. “Those who oppose me are so small and cowardly. What can they do to me? Burn me at the stake? Let them burn me. Put me in jail? I’ll go. . . . I’m not terrorized by all this.”