For Stability's Sake

TODAY FASCISM DIES...a lengthy strip of cardboard bearing that willful message punctuated the debris strewn in the wake of rebellion at the Athens Polytecnic School nearly a year ago. Fascism is no more perishable than the phoenix, but its victims die. The Greek people suffered from brutal repression to which America was an accomplice for seven years. With the national elections tomorrow--the first in over a decade--Greece will quench internal tyranny, and the United States will have an opportunity to show that it is not wedded to unlawful terrorist regimes.

The results of the voting hinge on several clearcut issues. Just scrutinizing the principal candidates for prime minister and their respective parties yields the outline of a few crucial points. Of the five major factions, the party headed by Constantine Caramanlis, whose politics lean to the right, seems almost certain to gain a majority.

After the failure of this summer's coup in Cyprus, the junta's last president, General Gizikis, invited Caramanlis to take over the collapsing government. Caramanlis retained Gizikis as a figurehead president and, in deference to public sentiment, finally exiled five other members of the junta--strong-man George Papadopoulos included--to the Aegean island of Kea. But his skittish attitude towards punishment of the leaders and instruments of dictatorship, including known torturers, has drawn sharp criticism from the opposition. He did gain credit as being independent of American influence--and soothed people's self-esteem--by taking Greece out of NATO.

In any case, the conservative Caramanlis and his party, New Democracy, are quite popular. He is admired for his masculine, handsome appearance and firm, blunt manner. A former prime minister, he wields the advantage of an international reputation and has demonstrated considerable administrative ability.

But many unsettling details mottle Caramanlis's political career. In 1959, he affirmed a characteristic policy of capitulation by concluding the Zurich agreement establishing conditional independence for Cyprus, to the disadvantage of the ethnic Greeks--an agreement that contributed to the current Cyprus tragedy. During his eight years in power in the 1950s and early sixties, he cooperated with the Palace and CIA to maintain a repressive, albeit economically successful, regime by saturating the army and police forces with members of the extreme right. Documents indicate that he won the election of 1961 by fraud and intimidation; shortly afterwards, the "Z" incident occurred--when liberal representative Dr. Gregory Lambrakis was assassinated in Salonika. Granted, Caramanlis was unaware of the plans for murder, but he tolerated the trinity of Palace, CIA and economic oligarchy that conceived them.

Although he keeps discreetly silent, the suspicion prevails that Caramanlis favors King Constantine's return, if only as a figurehead. A plebiscite on December 10 will decide whether to preserve the monarchy. In a similar vein--which emphasizes his inclination towards executive strength at the expense of the parliamentary branch--he may envision a republic after de Gaulle's model.

George Mavros, a conservative former associate of the late prime minister George Papandreou--whose re-election the '67 coup aimed to avert--heads the party of the Center Union-New Political Forces. The junta exiled him repeatedly on account of his antagonistic public statements, and he joined Caramanlis as vice-premier and minister of external affairs when the regime fell. He counts a youngish (late forties to early fifties) group of progressive middle-class Greeks among his followers--most of whom actively resisted the dictatorship and suffered persecution, exile, jail, and torture. These people comprise, specifically, the NPF sector of the party, and a significant number of university professors and internationally known economists scatter the lot.

The American press tends to promote Mavros as second to Caramanlis in political clout. Yet, as a minister in the same interim government, the Centrist leader has found it difficult to criticize the premier and project an independent identity. This factor may bolster the faction to his immediate left.

The leftist party is called PASOK--Panhellenic Socialist Movement. Created by Andreas Papandreou, it promotes a Western brand of socialism and takes a vehemently anti-American, anti-NATO, anti-royalist stance; in effect, it perpetuates the underground resistance organization PAK (Panhellenic Liberation Movement). Andreas--as he is universally known--advocates neutrality, promotes the Third World and comes across aggressively, enthusiastically and eloquently. Many people consider the man a threat to post-junta stability; of all the politicians (besides the Communists, who have little apparent power or desire to exert any radical influenced, have suffered suppression, and are newly haunted by the specter of Chile), he is least acceptable to the army and the Americans, who are still feared as potentially troublesome. As Kissinger told Greek Archibishop Iakovos, with blithe overgeneralization, "We do not wish at all to see Papandreou governing Greece because this would mean subjecting Greece to Communist power."

CERTAINLY WITH the highest rate of inflation in Europe, Greece could use Andreas's economic expertise, already tested with impressive results during George Papandreou's term.

A fourth party, the extreme left, consists of a coalition of two Communist splinter parties--one Soviet-oriented, the other autonomous--and the United Democratic Left (EDA), of Elias Eliou. EDA shifted its electoral power toward the Center during the 1960s--partly out of a desire to combat the authoritarian government of the prejunta Caramanlis. Whether it will regain its followers once more remains to be seen. A striking phenomenon in Greece these days (or in Athens, at least), is the extreme left's appeal to middle-class youth. And what is almost unbelievable is the older generation's tolerance of the left, in light of its paranoid attitude from after World War II until the junta's imposition. Now elder Greeks feel very hostile (literally paranoid) towards the far right.

This extreme right operates under Petros Garouphalias, and unites dedicated royalists with stragglers from the junta under the name of the National Democratic Union (EDE). As the owner of the nation's largest brewery, Fix, Garouphalias is a classic representative of the economic oligarchy in a small country.

One more controversial issue worth mentioning is the curious electoral process itself, formulated over the summer by Caramanlis's administration. Greek government functions on the basis of 300 parliamentary representatives and a prime minister, who are selected by apportioning seats among the parties relative to the number of votes each receives; the leader of the party that gleans a simple majority becomes prime minister. The distribution of votes, however, will be staggered into three rounds. In order to participate in the second round, a party must obtain 17 per cent of the popular support, a coalition of three parties (for which only the extreme left qualifies) must obtain 30 per cent of the electoral balloting. These provisions purge the communist left and divert its votes at an early stage of the parcelling to the rightist majority.

It is doubtful that Greece has ever experienced free and honest elections. The party in power traditionally collects a substantive advantage, of between five and ten per cent of the vote, on its psychological influence. In the past, coercion has held sway. And the electoral system has reinforced the right--although the quantity of votes required by the leading party previously measured at only 15 per cent. In the 1963 and 1967 elections, George Papandreou defied the stacked deck, almost toppling it; the events of last summer jarred it. But if Caramanlis prevails tomorrow its structure will remain, in the interest of stability.