A road of no return
Seven months still remain before the local elections, so one wonders whether PASOK opposition leader George Papandreou’s recent rhetoric will continue at its current level and what reactions it may provoke within Greek society. When he accuses the prime minister of being «in hiding» – even though he duels with him in Parliament twice a month – and when he accuses him of being a «crook,» what choice phrases might he come up with on the eve of the elections? I heard that in his reply in Parliament on Wednesday, Papandreou was seen for the first time glancing at notes passed to him by Costas Simitis. It’s about time! Ever since he abandoned his reformist rhetoric a few months ago and, on the orders of the entangled interests, became an advocate of Simitis’s eight years of waste and corruption, it was only natural that the former prime minister, who only recently referred to Papandreou as incompetent, should now congratulate him. Naturally, Simitis and the entangled interests want to push Papandreou to extremes, but he himself does not realize that the people will soon get fed up and turn their backs on these insults. Of course in politics, everything is judged by the results, so we will have to wait until the local elections to see how the people will respond to these polarizing tactics – of which they had bitter experience in the early 1980s. Most people have begun to suspect that Papandreou’s new style is nothing more than a smokescreen for his lack of proposals on the country’s burning issues. Why hasn’t the opposition suggested a law, for example, on fighting unemployment, tax evasion or the high cost of living? Either it has no proposals to make or else Papandreou’s ideas on the economy are more liberal than those of ND.
