LETTER FROM CORFU:Relationship of citizens to authority and their resistance to it is at heart of Greece's woes, writes RICHARD PINE
IT’S DIFFICULT, if not impossible, to imagine Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny sharing a bedroom, under any circumstances.
But Greek premier George Papandreou and the newly elected leader of the opposition, Antonis Samaras, did just that when they were both graduate students at Amherst, Massachusetts, back in the early 1970s.
They are best buddies. Even more inconceivable is that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would ever “get into bed” with one another, politically speaking.
But, barring a national coalition, there is a definite sense of rapprochement between government party Pasok and opposition New Democracy (ND) as the Greek financial crisis continues to dismay the country.
In parliament, of course, Samaras and Papandreou continue to hurl political slogans at one another, but off-camera their friendship has been confirmed. It’s no secret that most of the current crisis is due to ND’s handling of the economy from 2004 to 2009, or that the corruption scandals hanging over the country can be laid mostly at ND’s door. Samaras has little with which to chastise Papandreou.
He inherited a can of worms from outgoing PM Kostas Karamanlis, whose most astute tactic was to lose the October election and resign as ND’s leader.
In the international press, Greece and Ireland are cited in the same breath as countries that took the credit system beyond creditable limits in the spirit of tigerish expansion.
But where Ireland has bitten the bullet on issues such as public sector pay cuts, reductions in public employment, welfare and health benefits, the socialist government in Greece regards such steps as mortal sins.
Public employees and the powerful trades unions are likely to turn current unrest into street disorder at the drop of a drachma. The universities produce more PhDs in civil unrest than in any other discipline – or indiscipline – and the vigour and immediacy of protest is a reason for serious political fear.
But behind the need for consensus, behind the financial crisis and the nationwide unrest in all sectors, is a much more basic problem that has beset Greek society since the foundation of the state in the 1830s.
That problem has always been insecurity about national
identity, the relationship of citizens to authority and their resistance to it.
After 400 years of Turkish domination and a 10-year war of independence (does this sound familiar?), Greeks were unsure about “who we are”, and 180 years later there is still a vigorous debate about what Greekness consists of, how it relates to Europe and, more importantly, to the other Balkan states (Turkey included).
Self-determination depends on one’s definition of self. How can Greece be thoroughly historical and thoroughly modern: how can it live with itself?
The Greek state has always been directed by a complacent civil service whose motto is “I’m alright, Yianni”. Papandreou distinguished himself as the first Greek leader to acknowledge, in Brussels, the corruption that permeates Greek administration.
There is a good deal of bribe-taking and clientelism, and a job for Yianni whether he merits it or not, but even this level of corruption is a symptom of the problem, not its root.
It may seem shocking to say that the task of solving the country’s economic problems is second to this question of its identity. But the finances are recoverable, whereas the question of identity seems to be insuperable.
The new Acropolis Museum is one marker of Greece’s lifeline to its glorious past and a lever to recover the Elgin Marbles for the Parthenon.
But the home of democracy must also be a house of deep dispute – after all, Socrates was tried, condemned and executed on charges of impiety and corruption of youth.
A nice little thinker but a dangerous citizen. And Dangerous Citizens is the title of a recent study of the Greek left by anthropologist Neni Panourgia.
It cannot claim to be dispassionate – as a 15-year-old, Panourgia herself witnessed the 1973 student riots that effectively ended the military dictatorship. She would probably argue strenuously that Pasok is not truly leftist, yet she would, equally, look with intellectual disdain on Syriza, a self-styled “coalition of the radical left”, which has 13 seats in the 300-seat parliament.
The left has “a frustrated identity” and an imponderable but vital relationship with the modern Greek state, she writes.
Dick Spring once told me that, at the time of the 1993 Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition, it was essential both Labour parties went into government: the party of which he was leader, and the party of which Michael D Higgins was president.
There is a similar split in Greek socialism, with the centrists, led by Papandreou, opposed by old-style hardliners from the time of the party’s formation in 1974.
What is most worrying about the fortunes of Greece today is that Papandreou lacks the killer instinct that would enable him to cut off his opponents’ legs at the shoulders. After 100 days in office, one of his best reassurances is that his old room-mate Samaras has no answers either, and leads an equally divided party.
This is what bedevils the ghostly presence of the Greek left – because, as in Ireland, there is no discernible left with any political muscle. Although, with its questions about authority, it suffuses society, it makes little impact on social development.
As Socrates might have said, “left” is a state of mind, deviancy from a norm that doesn’t exist.