High life
Turning a blind eye
Taki
Last week Greek terrorists murdered yet another Greek businessman, Costis Peratikos, father of three. A poll taken immediately after the foul killing revealed that not a small number of Greeks sympa- thised with the assassins. Need I say more about my birthplace? The victim was a ship owner who had bought a bankrupt shipyard off the state. (I knew him and his family well.) When he resisted outrageous union demands — the very same demands that had bankrupted the yard and forced the state to put it on the block — he became a marked man for the cowards that go by the name 17 November. (They have murdered more than 20 business leaders and nobody has ever been caught.) In other words, the government nation- alises a profitable business, runs it into the ground, sells it back to a private individual and the innocent later pays the piper. Two men are indirectly responsible for the mur- der, Constantine Karamanlis, ex-prime minister and president, and Costas Simitis, the present premier. Karamanlis first left Greece in 1964 after an electoral defeat. He remained in Paris for ten years and returned after the col- lapse of the junta in 1974. He immediately went after businessmen who he felt had not been loyal to him while in exile. He nation- alised the above mentioned shipyard for no other reason than his personal animosity towards the then owner.
The present PM, Costas Simitis, a social- ist, sold the shipyard and then washed his hands of it once the unfortunate Perafikos began negotiations with the unions. Who are the 17 November killers? Easy. They began as anti-junta elements during the late Sixties and early Seventies. Some of them eventually went into government with Andreas Papandreou, others remained out- side the law fighting against 'Western deca- dence'. The Papandreou socialists, who have ruled for the last 17 years except for two, knew who they were but refused to do any- thing about it. It was a case of turning a blind eye. Better yet, it's like Sinn Fein pre- tending not to know who the IRA killers are.
Ironically, the two countries that have benefited the most from EU munificence — i.e. your taxes and mine — are Ireland and Greece, both of which turn a blind eye to terrorism and illegality. Which brings me to King Constantine of the Hel- lenes.
A couple of weeks ago, the aforemen- tioned Karamanlis, ex-premier and ex-pres- ident of Greece, published his memoirs. It just so happens Karamanlis was once a very close friend of my father's, and I know a thing or two having seen it from up close. Karamanlis, as is his habit, has decided to besmirch King Constantine's reputation by writing that the monarch had tried to organise a coup against the elected Greek government in 1976. Here are the facts: In 1976, following the collapse of the colonels, Karamanlis held a referendum that was at best dubious. The King was not permitted to set foot in Greece and his supporters were intimidated. The monarch nevertheless accepted the result and Greece became a republic. Soon after, the Greek foreign minister, George Rallis, vis- ited the King in London and told him that the Greek government had information that a coup was being prepared against it. The King immediately asked for an audi- ence with the prime minister, James Callaghan. The latter told him the rumours were Greek-government inspired and that the British government would not play their game. Although the King insisted that Rallis accompany him to Downing Street, the Greek minister refused. Now we read that the King was planning a coup.
It is a sad day when a five-times premier and two-times president publishes outright falsehoods in order to discredit an institu- tion the monarchy — that has always Put its country first, unlike himself, who has always put his private desires ahead of anything else. King Constantine was the first to resist the colonels and lost his throne as a result. He was asked three times by politicians (once by Karamanlis, twice by P. Canellopoulos) to suspend the Fonstitution during civil disobedience inspired by the Left, and three times he refused. Now he is accused of doing what he did not allow to happen during his watch. Both Peratikos and the King are vic- tims of a mentality that belongs more to the Congo, Nigeria and Angola than to Europe.
Previous page
