Greece: After the Junta Page 2

As to foreign policy, not only did U.S. bases remain in Greece (this till 1994), based on fear of the Turks, should Greece shun NATO, which continues to be a main uniting force among Greek parties to this day.

The loan money doled out by the EC (on the verge of becoming the EU), has already been mentioned. By the late 1980s, despite all of the above, there seemed no viable alternatives to the PASOK administration. Scandal deepened Papandreous unpopularity, with his divorce of his American wife for a young Olympic airlines stewardess, whose company made him neglect public meetings and the like.

Even more serious were scandals involving illegal arms deals and embezzlement by the Bank of Crete.

Left wing parties, including the KKE and Elliniki Aristera (Greek Left), formed the coalition Synaspismos in response to government corruption.

A three month coalition followed the first inconclusive 1989 elections, under a strange combination of conservatives and communists, under the leadership of Ioannis Tzanetakis, a naval officer who had led a mutiny against the junta, followed by another temporary government after the second inconclusive elections under a man who had been rector of Athens University.

The elections of 1990 finally had a conclusive result: the return of Nea Dimokratia to power, under Cretan Constantine Mitsotakis, as prime minister.

Austerity measures including a wage freeze for civil servants and hikes in costs of utilities and basic public services, though given the world recession, inflation and unemployment remained very high.

Mitsotakis responded to the terrorist threat of the Dekaefta Noemvriou (November 17th ) group, named for the date of the 1973 junta attack on the Polytechnic in Athens, and who had since committed some 24 assassination, by censoring newspapers which printed the speeches of the group’s leaders, and jailing two newspaper editors for several days who had defied the ban.

The public wasn’t having any of this type of thing, nor was it amenable to the anti-strike laws instituted by Mitsotakis.

In early 1992, Papandreou was acquitted in his much televised trial for corruption connected with the Bank of Crete (by a margin of one vote), though two of his ministers were convicted and given jail sentences, which they bought off with stiff fines, though they could not hold public office for awhile afterward.

The trial aroused sympathy for Papandreou and increased discontent with Mitsotakis, which deepened over the conflict concerning the new republic that called itself Macedonia after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 and even more over attacks leveled at him concerning theft of Minoan art, corruption related to the national cement company, and illegal phone tapping.

His ill health caused him to leave his post in 1996, and he died six months later. Papandreou was relected as prime minister in 1993, now in his seventies, and died in 1996, with PASOK taking over, electing the economist and lawyer Kostas Simitis as prime minster.

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