Recap, and Political Ramble 1
Feb. 10th, 2004 03:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katsarisWell I guess it's about time to start one of those political rambles I'd been wanting to post but kept on postponing -- mainly because I didn't know where to start... but if I'm not gonna ramble one month before my country has general elections when am I gonna ramble?
These rambles gonna be long and probably unfocused. And possibly incoherent to the non-Greeks among you, since I'm not gonna explain names and situations excessively, beyond the small recap to follow... So dive in if you dare, or not if you don't. :-)
And here's the ultra-short synopsis: One month ago, our prime minister of 8 years (Simitis) announced that he won't run again for prime minister, in the parliamentary elections to take place in early March. His replacement as chairman of PASOK (the socialist party) and possible prime-minister to be is George Papandreou, chosen out of a number of one, formerly minister of Foreign Affairs and son of the founder of the party (and former Prime Minister) Andreas Papandreou, who was himself the son of a former prime minister, George Papandreou.
His chief opponent is the party of "New Democracy" and its chairman, Kostas Karamanlis who is the nephew of Kostas Karamanlis, another former prime minister of Greece.
And I'm more undecided about whom to vote, than I've *ever* before been during election-time.
---
So that was the recap. Moving on...
...one thing that genuinely made me (somewhat) optimistic for the future is that it seemed to me that those elections would be the first where chauvinism one way or another would be made insignificant -- that it had been finally been crushed underfoot for all intends or purposes. I didn't expect this to *last* for long, but it was a relief, even if it was only a temporary one.
And that impression, and partial optimism still remains to me to a great extent. The most fundamentally nationalistic of PASOK's MPs was Papathemelis -- he's no longer a member of PASOK and went on to create his own party, unlikely to achieve more than 1% nationwide. The most horribly chauvinistic of ND's MPs was Karatzaferis -- and he was also expelled from his party, created a new party of his own, unlikely to achieve more than 2% nationwide.
Actually "horribly chauvinistic" is the understatement of the year where Karatzaferis is concerned. He was the most vile racist-bigot-orthodoxfascist-evilbastard-antisemetic-ultrareactionary-byzantiumfreak-juntalover-naziphile-monarchist-faceofevilincarnate that I've ever seen pass through the Greek parliament or the Greek TV screens. But his full characterization would be as long as the years of bigotry he has spewed, this... *orc* in human shape.
May he have a horrible death and all that. But enough about that bastard: He was expelled from ND (though alas, not for any of the above reasons but for something altogether trivial), and now he has founded his own party and he will get his roughly 1.4%, not enough to get him into the parliament --- and he will hopefully be slowly forgotten and dwindle into nothingness.
(Sidenote: I realized recently that Karatzaferis' expulsion is the reason that made me voting for ND possible. In earlier elections I had a multitude of reasons not to vote for them, so that Karatzaferis wasn't that big a issue... But now... I just thought that if he was member of the ND and ND won, and he got made into a minister -- dude, how would I look myself in the mirror if I had voted for the party and prime minister that allowed that guy to be part of the Greek government? So, no, the party that has Karatzaferis even as its most insignificant member will definitely never get any vote from me)
But as I said: enough about him... My point is that Papathemelis was evicted from PASOK, and Karatzaferis was evicted from ND... and it looked as if the two principal representatives of chauvinism no longer had any significant role to play in the political scene. They are just two people ofcourse, their eviction doesn't mean by itself that the *attitudes* they represented are gone...
...but the cool thing is that there was a very strong sign that the attitudes they represented were *indeed* also gone.
G. Papandreou says that if elected, he will immediately go to Turkey and make an agreement for the mutual and steady reduction of the defense budget the two countries spend. And instead of members of ND yelling to high heaven something to the point "how dare you, you blah-blah unpatriotic and treacherous blah-blah-blah dealing with blah-blah-blah Turk barbarians blah-blah-blah" we get instead something to the point of "HEY, that's what *WE* had suggested, years ago, and all those years it's *YOU* that didn't make it happen, and it's *your* party that has recently again signed for ludicrulously large military expenditures."
Whoa. Big whoa. Is this the same country of four and eight and ten years ago? Seems not. Back then a handshake with a Turkish PM would be nearly considered treasonous. Now we're discussing about mutual defense cuts with Turkey? And the other party doesn't attack the idea itself but the fact that it hasn't been implemented already?
Stunning. And nice.
(Or about ND saying that it'll cut military servitude to 6 months, down from one year it is today, and PASOK reacting with "Hey, that's what *we* are going to do, in the next few years with gradual reductions". Another nice surpise, though of a somewhat lesser caliber)
However.
It was in the news today, that Papathemelis will be cooperating with New Democracy. This seriously annoyed me with Karamanlis and puts me back into the firmly "undecided" position, when I had been seriously leaning towards voting for ND earlier... When you hope to hear possibly something about the liberal Andrianoupoulos getting back to the ND, and you get a PASOK chauvinist instead... that's a *very* poor replacement indeed.
Not that Papathemelis is even one hundredth as bad as Karatzaferis is, mind you -- I even had the occasional grudging respect for Papathemelis, and chauvinistic idiot though he was, he atleast also seemed like a *honest* chauvinistic idiot one could halfway respect, not the horrible demagoguic freak that Karatzaferis is.
And also this doesn't make trivial all the other improvements where political attitude by the parties is concerned...
But nonetheless. This is still a chauvinist who Karamanlis chose to cooperate with. Karamanlis will get a few percentage voters that would have voted for Papathemelis. Some DIKKI voters also perhaps. But I seriously hope that this alliance will also *cost* him votes -- as it has quite possibly cost him mine.
--
More rambles to follow.
These rambles gonna be long and probably unfocused. And possibly incoherent to the non-Greeks among you, since I'm not gonna explain names and situations excessively, beyond the small recap to follow... So dive in if you dare, or not if you don't. :-)
And here's the ultra-short synopsis: One month ago, our prime minister of 8 years (Simitis) announced that he won't run again for prime minister, in the parliamentary elections to take place in early March. His replacement as chairman of PASOK (the socialist party) and possible prime-minister to be is George Papandreou, chosen out of a number of one, formerly minister of Foreign Affairs and son of the founder of the party (and former Prime Minister) Andreas Papandreou, who was himself the son of a former prime minister, George Papandreou.
His chief opponent is the party of "New Democracy" and its chairman, Kostas Karamanlis who is the nephew of Kostas Karamanlis, another former prime minister of Greece.
And I'm more undecided about whom to vote, than I've *ever* before been during election-time.
---
So that was the recap. Moving on...
...one thing that genuinely made me (somewhat) optimistic for the future is that it seemed to me that those elections would be the first where chauvinism one way or another would be made insignificant -- that it had been finally been crushed underfoot for all intends or purposes. I didn't expect this to *last* for long, but it was a relief, even if it was only a temporary one.
And that impression, and partial optimism still remains to me to a great extent. The most fundamentally nationalistic of PASOK's MPs was Papathemelis -- he's no longer a member of PASOK and went on to create his own party, unlikely to achieve more than 1% nationwide. The most horribly chauvinistic of ND's MPs was Karatzaferis -- and he was also expelled from his party, created a new party of his own, unlikely to achieve more than 2% nationwide.
Actually "horribly chauvinistic" is the understatement of the year where Karatzaferis is concerned. He was the most vile racist-bigot-orthodoxfascist-evilbastard-antisemetic-ultrareactionary-byzantiumfreak-juntalover-naziphile-monarchist-faceofevilincarnate that I've ever seen pass through the Greek parliament or the Greek TV screens. But his full characterization would be as long as the years of bigotry he has spewed, this... *orc* in human shape.
May he have a horrible death and all that. But enough about that bastard: He was expelled from ND (though alas, not for any of the above reasons but for something altogether trivial), and now he has founded his own party and he will get his roughly 1.4%, not enough to get him into the parliament --- and he will hopefully be slowly forgotten and dwindle into nothingness.
(Sidenote: I realized recently that Karatzaferis' expulsion is the reason that made me voting for ND possible. In earlier elections I had a multitude of reasons not to vote for them, so that Karatzaferis wasn't that big a issue... But now... I just thought that if he was member of the ND and ND won, and he got made into a minister -- dude, how would I look myself in the mirror if I had voted for the party and prime minister that allowed that guy to be part of the Greek government? So, no, the party that has Karatzaferis even as its most insignificant member will definitely never get any vote from me)
But as I said: enough about him... My point is that Papathemelis was evicted from PASOK, and Karatzaferis was evicted from ND... and it looked as if the two principal representatives of chauvinism no longer had any significant role to play in the political scene. They are just two people ofcourse, their eviction doesn't mean by itself that the *attitudes* they represented are gone...
...but the cool thing is that there was a very strong sign that the attitudes they represented were *indeed* also gone.
G. Papandreou says that if elected, he will immediately go to Turkey and make an agreement for the mutual and steady reduction of the defense budget the two countries spend. And instead of members of ND yelling to high heaven something to the point "how dare you, you blah-blah unpatriotic and treacherous blah-blah-blah dealing with blah-blah-blah Turk barbarians blah-blah-blah" we get instead something to the point of "HEY, that's what *WE* had suggested, years ago, and all those years it's *YOU* that didn't make it happen, and it's *your* party that has recently again signed for ludicrulously large military expenditures."
Whoa. Big whoa. Is this the same country of four and eight and ten years ago? Seems not. Back then a handshake with a Turkish PM would be nearly considered treasonous. Now we're discussing about mutual defense cuts with Turkey? And the other party doesn't attack the idea itself but the fact that it hasn't been implemented already?
Stunning. And nice.
(Or about ND saying that it'll cut military servitude to 6 months, down from one year it is today, and PASOK reacting with "Hey, that's what *we* are going to do, in the next few years with gradual reductions". Another nice surpise, though of a somewhat lesser caliber)
However.
It was in the news today, that Papathemelis will be cooperating with New Democracy. This seriously annoyed me with Karamanlis and puts me back into the firmly "undecided" position, when I had been seriously leaning towards voting for ND earlier... When you hope to hear possibly something about the liberal Andrianoupoulos getting back to the ND, and you get a PASOK chauvinist instead... that's a *very* poor replacement indeed.
Not that Papathemelis is even one hundredth as bad as Karatzaferis is, mind you -- I even had the occasional grudging respect for Papathemelis, and chauvinistic idiot though he was, he atleast also seemed like a *honest* chauvinistic idiot one could halfway respect, not the horrible demagoguic freak that Karatzaferis is.
And also this doesn't make trivial all the other improvements where political attitude by the parties is concerned...
But nonetheless. This is still a chauvinist who Karamanlis chose to cooperate with. Karamanlis will get a few percentage voters that would have voted for Papathemelis. Some DIKKI voters also perhaps. But I seriously hope that this alliance will also *cost* him votes -- as it has quite possibly cost him mine.
--
More rambles to follow.
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I thought my country had problems
Date: 2004-02-10 04:54 am (UTC)As for reducing conscription to six months. I have only one thought: How much actual service will one get after Basic and the Technical MOS (military job) training would someone get. My Basic Training was nine weeks and my AIT to be a Finance soldier was another eight weeks. Granted I am a volunteer soldier who signed a four year enlistment contract (and made an Oath...plus it was optional to say "so help me God" at the end of it, as some of America's finest are atheists, Buddhists, and pagan (including two in my last unit)), so four montsh of training plus the 2.5 days of leave earned each month didn't dent my minimum obligation (of which I have 11 months left if you exclude leave).
I am glad that relationships between Turkey and Greece are getting better. As for President of the US, I find Bush a dissapointment (I think his socila conservate notions are bones he throws to the right wing fo the party so he won't get Nadered, but he is spending money like a drunken sailor on stuff not connected to defense or natioanl security), but I cannot stand John "Botox" Kerry. At least I can vote for a Libertarian who has no way of winning, but at least I agree with the Libertarian in most repsetc, and even where I don't, I like his reaosing for that position.
So what is DIKKI? And what is so bad about Byzatium...unless you refer to the buerecracy and corruption present back then? Of course my thoughts of Byzantium boil down to pretty art and pretty architecture, so I hope the question doesn't upset you too much.
Re: I thought my country had problems
Date: 2004-02-10 05:35 am (UTC)*shrug* Karatzaferis is a philo-Nazi who included avowed neoNazis in his political combination. Pretty much EVERYONE is a liberal compared to him. :-)
So what is DIKKI?
A minor party (last elections it got less than the 3% it'd require to be represented in the parliament) which I'd probably describe as being of socialist-fascist persuasion with a chauvinist bent. It broke away from PASOK about a decade back and since then it's been pretty close to the Communist Party in pretty much every issue.
And what is so bad about Byzatium
There's nothing wrong with Byzantium in its own place and time -- which was 500 years back. But now we're in modern-day Greece and a Greek person who poses with a flag of Byzantium behind his back (as Karatzaferis regularly does) is atleast 5 times worse than a modern-day American who'd pose with a Confederate flag behind his back.
Byzantium wasn't a democracy. There was no freedom of either expression or religion -- and in these respects it was worse both from our modern times AND from Ancient Greece.
So, people can feel free to honour the pretty architecture and music *without* thinking Byzantium as a whole to be a vision of paradise-on-earth, as some of them seem bent to do, or even worse a vision of how things should one day be again.