Word: papandreou
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Greeks were exhilarated in 1981 when Andreas Papandreou and his Socialist Party swept to power. Their enthusiasm has long since turned to bitterness and disbelief as the worst financial and political scandal in four decades engulfs Greece. The press, the Bank of Greece, a magistrate and Parliament are delving into charges of corruption, seeking to uncover how more than $210 million disappeared from the Bank of Crete. Charges of embezzlement, kickbacks and bribery, of banknotes stuffed into briefcases, have been leveled against high officials...
Much of Europe joined in the snickering last week after Papandreou flaunted his ample young mistress at a European Community summit meeting for which he was host on the Greek island of Rhodes. Photos of the enraptured and grandfatherly Prime Minister with a miniskirted Liani were splashed from London to Istanbul, where the Turkish daily Hurriyet called Papandreou an "international laughingstock...
...romantic indiscretion is just one of the recent and largely self- inflicted wounds sustained by Papandreou. A leftist who has dominated Greek politics with a mix of shrewdness and populist passion since taking office in 1981, he may have blown his chance of winning another term when elections are held by next June. Most politically explosive is the so-called Koskotas affair, Greece's biggest postwar banking scandal, which broke in October, just as Papandreou was returning to work after open-heart surgery. It has threatened to implicate two high-ranking government officials and has rocked his ruling Panhellenic Socialist...
Support for PASOK, which won 46% of the vote in the 1985 national election, has plunged to 20% in Athens, half the popularity base of New Democracy, the rightist opposition party. Predicts Gerassimos Arsenis, a former PASOK economic minister: "This is the end of Papandreou. The recent scandals have finally helped to demythicize...
...Democracy leader Constantine Mitsotakis is confident he will emerge as the next Prime Minister. Unlike Papandreou, who came to power promising to pull out of the European Community and NATO as well as to remove U.S. military bases from Greece, Mitsotakis leans toward the West. "This is going to be the worst situation any Greek Prime Minister has inherited since the end of World War II," says Mitsotakis, noting that his most difficult problem will be to "restore the economy, which is in total disarray." Most observers, though, feel that Greece is fed up with overbearing political parties and personalities...