Coup countercoup
GREECE MICHAEL LLEWELLYN-SMITH
Athens—Last Wednesday I came out of the library at one o'clock and went home for lunch. A friend rang up to say that tanks had been trundling through Athens during the last hour. Should we go and see what was up? We went down to the radio station in the Zappeion Park and managed to get past the private soldier standing guard near the entry to the park. There were seven or eight amphibious troop carriers in the road in front of the radio station—a soldier said they were M-59s—and troops all over the lawns setting up machine guns to cover the approaches to the area. The casualness of Greek life was not entirely absent; the Zappeion gardeners had not been thrown out, but con- tinued to clip the hedges, trim the flower borders and sweep up autumnal leaves. We stood at the door of the radio station for a few minutes chatting to the marines and a police officer with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder; very sympathetically, he refused to let us in. An officer with lots of pips and braid bustled out of the building and made for a jeep. I asked him what was going on. `Absolutely nothing,' he said. 'Just an exercise.' By then soldiers were setting up mortars in the stadium, four tanks were rolling towards the King's house at Tatoi, a big bang had alerted the inhabitants of Kiphissia, and, for those who could hear, the King's message had been broadcast from Larissa.
During the afternoon I listened for a few minutes to the excited exchanges of Greek army units in the country, over a short-wave radio. 'Olympus 20, Olympus 20, where are you? . . . Ajax 2, Ajax 2, wait for my message,' etc. It was impossible to tell which side they were on. The Greek I was with thought they were royalists, and that they were doing well. It looked as if the country was divided in two, the 3rd Army Corps in the north being loyal to the King. No one wanted to begin shooting. The two sides were making faces at each other and conducting propaganda war to attract the waverers.
The junta won more quickly than anyone expected for two reasons. First, it held both major centres of communications. Without control of Salonika—the city where Venizelos succeeded in setting up a rebel government in 1916, dividing the country into Venizelist north and Royalist south—the King could not hope to convince the people and doubtful officers of northern Greece that he had a chance. Brigadier-General Patilis, the Minister for Northern Greece, helped to kill the royalist movement with his statement on Salonika radio —relayed to Athens—that the rebellion would be speedily crushed. Second, and more important, the junta's contingency planning against just such an occasion—the purge of royalist officers, the infiltration of tough captains and majors and colonels into key positions in every corps— paid off. These men knew what to do in an emergency—arrest their senior officers. The junta knew, moreover, and had no doubt spread the word, who the suspect generals were. Thus at the moment of crisis the informal chain of command proved stronger than the formal. But even as it was, there were a few hours when the issue hung in the balance. 'At Kavalla,' said an eye-witness, 'the impression was that the King was the victor and had the situation under control. To such an extent that the communiqués of Athens radio announcing the victory of the government provoked hilarity, especially among the military.. ..'
Even if the events of Wednesday gave the junta more of a shock than they now care to admit, by Thursday morning they were abso- lutely in control again. Papadopoulos, appointed Prime Minister, Minister of Defence and Minister to the Prime Minister's office (with control over the means of communication) overnight, conducted a very crisp press con- ference—no bluster, no savage recriminations —in which he expressed pained incredulity at the King's behaviour, announced an amnesty for the 'very few officers who disobeyed,' and declared that there was no change in the form of the regime—i.e. Greece's 'Royal Democracy.' This bland assurance, followed by the restora- tion of those photos of the King which hot- heads had begun to rip down from the walls of public buildings, put the ball into the King's court, which was by this time literally in the Greek embassy in Rome. On Friday Pattakos, questioned on the King's position and the affair of the photos and portraits, remarked with some wit, 'We are not iconoclasts.' And on Saturday it was revealed that both the Archbishop Hieronymus and the Foreign Minister Pipinelis, not to speak of Niarchos and the us ambassa- dor, were consulting with the King in Rome on his next move.
If he were to come back, what would he come back to? Here the reactions of the Greeks to the events of the last few days are significant. The fatalism which I have described in previous reports has been the predominant feeling in Athens. People went about their business in the usual way, undisturbed by the armoured cars and the martial music churned out by the radio. Old party resentments divided the loyalty of the centre. For some weeks George Papandreou has been quietly advising his friends to stand by the King against the junta. But an old Papandreou supporter whom I spoke to the day after the abortive coup, while recognising that the junta is now more firmly than ever in power, was glad that the King had failed. 'We don't want him as liberator,' he said; and many from the centre feel the same way. As to the right-wing ERE, most of its supporters approve of the junta's anti-communism, and a number of them have by now thrown in their lot with the government. For many of them— there are notable exceptions such as Mr Kanel- lopoulos and his friends—instinctive loyalty to the King is balanced by tolerance for a govern. ment which they see as basically 'sound.' If the King comes back to be the junta's figurehead, they will be happy enough. But if the King comes back he will lose the last shreds of respect with which he is regarded by the centre.
The foreign press is seizing on every minis- terial statement and every visit to Rome as evidence of desperate efforts at mediation between King and junta; but Papadopoulos is probably not too worried by the question of the King's return. He knows that the King's failure has badly damaged his prestige in Greece, and he knows that foreign recognition of the regime will follow in due course from the powers that matter. Any power with the serious intention of embarrassing the junta would have withdrawn its ambassador already, for consulta- tions. Only the Scandinavian countries are pre- pared to go to these lengths.
Thus the junta, firmly in control, can afford not to worry about the King. If he remains abroad the Greeks in their present mood will soon get used to his absence. If he returns— and it seems to me he would be mad to return —it will be as a figurehead of no power and minimal influence. Colonel Papadopoulos now controls the destinies of the Greeks as no man has done since Metaxas in the 'thirties.
What will the colonel do with his power? The first reaction to the royalist attempt has been a new wave of arrests, of political figures such as Mavros and Papaligouras, and members of the royal entourage such as Hourmouzios. They will probably soon be freed. The only public figures of this eminence whom the regime will keep under surveillance are those like Kanellopoulos who cannot be trusted to keep their mouths shut. As to policy, Papadopoulos himself, as well as Pattakos and Makarezos, has announced that there is no change. The aims of the revolution of 21 April remain the quash- ing of communists and fellow-travellers, the abolition of corruption and inefficiency, and the creation of a healthy free enterprise economy through incentives to productive enterprise—especially in the exporting indus- tries—and through the encouragement of foreign investment.
Most Greeks, including many ideological opponents of the junta, are prepared to admit that much of what the junta has done has showed a common sense and firmness which political governments over the last few years have lacked. The growth rate for this year (about 5 per cent) is low, and the amount of foreign capital actually imported (as opposed to capital which may be imported under agree- ments signed with the government) is disap- pointing. But the balance of payments has recently taken a turn for the better. However unpleasant it may be for liberals who believe that because the colonels are illiberal, they must be incompetent also, it now appears that the junta is going to survive its economic troubles.
In fact, more people than would care publicly to admit it agree with the junta's aims in the economic and administrative spheres. But the suspicion still remains that the colonels will try to impose solutions by fiat and moral ex- hortation rather than patient reorganisation. So far reform has been limited to ineffective statements of intent (all applications will be answered in so many days); the weeding out of excess manpower and of politically unacceptable figures, and the imposition of economies some of which make nonsense of the work a department is trying to do; and spectacular exposures of the corrupt, such as the gaggle of health service doctors recently arrested for overprescribing drugs for their pharmacist friends. For an authoritarian government, all this is too easy. Something more is needed—a realistic salary structure, incen- tives for young, qualified men, above all the opportunity for them to take decisions. But the list is endless. The red tape is still uncut.
The emergence of Colonel Papadopoulos as top man has aroused some expectations of a more radical approach to the country's prob- lems. He is talked of as a `Nasserite: The term is misleading if it implies anything more than a brusque commitment to efficiency and a lack of respect for persons, such as the King and his friends. What he has said in public gives no grounds for the belief that he has any revolutionary ideas in the social or economic fields; be appears rather as a ham philosopher. One encouraging sign has been his recent references to the young. He has sensibly pointed out that the average age of men in public life in recent years has been absurdly high, and that something must be done about this. But this nugget of common sense was embedded in an unsubtle account of the reasons for the Greek impasse, which placed the blame firmly on the moral depravity of his people. 'The Greek in his manifestations became an anti- social individual within society as a whole, undisciplined and neglectful of law and moral order. . . . The new generation, with public life in such a sorry state, did not venture to make an appearance on the public scene.' Much of the time Papadopoulos appears to be prescribing a simple change of heart. This naive view is by no means confined to the junta. For years the Greeks have been calling for a change of heart and a 'raising of the standards of public life,' without suggesting how it is to be accomplished. Here again, it is the continuity of pre-coup and post-coup attitudes which is remarkable rather than the prospect of change. But all that is known for certain about Papadopoulos is his authoritarian ideas and his paternalist view of the Greek people. 'We must give directives for the proper conduct of the Greeks.'
In the near future we shall know what these directives are. The draft of the new constitu- tion, due to have been submitted on 15 December, is finally to be delivered to the government on Saturday. We know already from statements made last week by the presi- dent of the drafting commission that individual liberties will not extend to those whose 'opinions and beliefs will lead to the overthrow of the existing status.' Within a few days also the government will receive from the Ministry of Coordination the new five-year plan, aiming at the not unreasonable annual growth rate of 8 per cent.
For the moment, the junta is firmly in the saddle. The economy has not collapsed, the country is calm, and the majority of the people are glad indeed that they got through last week without a shooting war. They are content to keep out of trouble, and leave the resistance organisations to battle it out with the army and the police. The unevenness of this battle, in the face of a largely indifferent population, is such that the government could well afford now to set free most of its political prisoners as a gesture to international opinion. The opinion which interests it, however, is that of foreign capitalists and of the -us government. The former consider that political prisoners, freedom of the press, etc, are none of their business. If the latter fails to exert pressure on the junta, the likelihood is no change in Greece.
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