Unhappy birthday
GREECE HELEN VLACHOS
Next Monday 21 April will mark the Greek junta's second anniversary in power. It is a year for anniversaries. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949, and the Council of. Europe was born on 5 May the same year. A week ago NATO was solemnly feted in Washington, and in two weeks' time the Council will _have its celebrations in Lon- don. By coincidence, both the twenty year olds are closely related to the two year old—not that they are very happy about it. Indeed, for two years now Greece and its military regime have been an embarrassment and a problem. But not enough of a problem, not an acute and dangerous one labelled `urgent.' And many believe that until and unless it becomes so, no one will take the trouble -to do any- thing drastic about it.
Now an anniversary, however distasteful, is an accepted occasion for the exercise of an assessment. And the • situation in Greece on the eve of the beginning of the third junta year can be summed up in a single word: failure. Failure all round. The military men have failed and the politicians have failed; the king has failed and the resistance groups have failed, and the democratic voices of the world have failed. The most important fact of all is that the Greek military rulers have notably failed to make friends and in- fluence investors. After two years of brain- washing, after two years of squandering more public money than the most `corrupt' of governments in pre-election days, the ex- colonels have not gained even a minimum of national support. And this is the root of all their worries. This is why they have to main- tain martial law and a state of siege, and full censorship of the press and all mass-media; that is why they have to concentrate their atten- tion on their own survival and use the army and the police for their own security.
Having hijacked the country, they still have to run it with pistol in hand. And what they call peace, quiet and stability is in reality fear, silence and immobility. No one at this moment knows for sure where Greece is going to land in the future. But no one believes that it will be possible to keep the Greeks •muzzled and under lock and key for ever. `Something will have to happen, so let us sit tight and wait .. is the line that most Greeks take, even the few that are genuinely pro-junta; and with their passivity they are preparing an inevitable economic crisis.
No amount of censorship or cooking of figures and statistics can cover op the general decline in all sections of economic life; and nothing that the colonels can do or say can restore confidence. On the contrary, the more they say, the more they threaten and promise, the more the Greek scene empties of people who are willing to risk making plans in such uncertain political weather. And I am not thinking of the Greeks of quality •who have long ago either left Greece or got into jail, or at least stopped doing whatever -they did when free—publishing books. exhibiting pic- tures, acting, building. teaching. Universities and schools have gained in spies what they have lost in professors, and the decline in education will take years to redress.
`That is all very well, but how are they to be got out if they don't want to go?' is the inevitable—and unanswerable—question that crops up whenever the Greek question arises. And that `they don't want to go' is a cer- tainty. They will stay on and promise and proclaim every kind of democratisation, ready to take it back on the sly if it proves dan- gerous. They will stay on and hang on to power and drag Greece into misery and despair and eventually into civil war. Unless—what? Many people believe that American and inter- national pressure could at least try to dislodge the junta if only there was an `alternative' on the horizon. That could be more easily believed if it were true : but it is not, at least not any more. There is, and there has been for some months now, an alternative called Mr C. Karamanlis. The sixty-two year old right-wing politician, prime minister of Greece from 1955 to 1963, has in a sudden and not yet fully ex- plained change 'of heart made known that he is ready to go back into politics. His readiness is not a secret. It has been divulged to all the right people in all the right -places, together with the fact that he has secured acceptance by practically every major figure of the Greek right and centre-right.
He could go back either as the head of a coalition government or as the leader of a party ready to take part in free elections. I repeat, Karamanlis-is ready and willing to go back into politics if there are any politics to go back to. What he cannot do is persuade, bribe or hypno- - tise those 'honest' colonels into keeping their initial promise that, having 'saved' Greece (a feat announced as achieved at the end of their first month in power) they would agree to fade out of the picture. Neither Karamanlis nor any alternative can free Greece from the junta, especially as long as NATO and the Council of Europe are still holding their two year old by the hand.
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