Andreas Papandreou

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou Template:Lang-el
3rd and 8th Prime Minister of the Third Hellenic Republic
In office October 21, 1981 – July 2, 1989 October 13, 1993 – January 22, 1996
Preceded by	George Rallis (1981) Constantine Mitsotakis (1993)
Succeeded by	Tzannis Tzannetakis (1989) Costas Simitis (1996)
Personal details
Born	(1919-02-15)February 15, 1919 Chios, Greece
Died	June 23, 1996(1996-06-23) (aged 77) Athens, Greece
Political party	Panhellenic Socialist Movement
Spouse(s)	Margaret Papandreou Dimitra Liani

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou (Template:Lang-el) (5 February, 1919 – 23 June, 1996) was a Greek economist, a socialist politician and a major figure in Greek politics. He served three terms as Prime Minister of Greece (October 21, 1981, to July 2, 1989, and October 13, 1993, to January 22, 1996). In 1999, Papandreou was posthumously awarded the Swedish Order of the Polar Star.

Early life and career

Papandreou was born on the island of Chios, Greece, the son of the leading Greek liberal politician George Papandreou. His mother, born Zofia (Sofia) Mineyko, was half Polish. Before university, he attended Athens Experimental (Piramatiko) Lyceum, a leading public secondary education institution in Greece. He attended the University of Athens from 1937, and from 1938 he was active in Trotskyist groups. The Greek Parliament approved Ioannis Metaxas as Prime Minister in April 1936. After a turbulent period of strikes and unrest, Metaxas by Royal Decree suspended the Parliament on 4th August 1936 and prepared Greece ultimately for World War II.

In 1942, Papandreou enrolled at Harvard University, where he completed a doctorate in economics. In 1943, Papandreou joined America's war effort and volunteered for the US Navy where he served as a nurse at Bethesda Hospital for war wounded, and became a United States citizen. He returned to Harvard in 1946 and served as a lecturer and associate professor until 1947. He then held professorships at the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, the University of California, Berkeley (where he was chair of the Department of Economics), the University of Stockholm and York University in Toronto, Canada. In 1948, he entered into a relationship with University of Minnesota journalism student Margaret Chant,. After Chant obtained a divorce and after hiS own divorce with Christina Rasia, his first wife, Papandreou and Chant were married in 1951. They had three sons and a daughter. Papandreou also had a daughter out of wedlock living in Sweden.

Political career

Papandreou returned to Greece in 1959, where he headed an economic development research program, by invitation of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis. In 1960, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and General Director of the Athens Economic Research Center, and Advisor to the Bank of Greece. In 1963, his father George Papandreou, head of the Center Union, became Prime Minister of Greece. Andreas became his chief economic advisor. He renounced his American citizenship and was elected to the Greek Parliament in the Greek legislative election, 1964. He immediately became Minister to the First Ministry of State (in effect, assistant Prime Minister).

Papandreou took publicly a neutral stand on the Cold War and wished for Greece to be more independent from the USA. He also criticized the massive presence of American military and intelligence in Greece, and sought to remove senior officers with "anti-democratic tendencies" from the Greek military. Papandreou also tried unsuccessfully to prevent the continuation of the KYP's practice - which worked extremely closely with the CIA - to listen in to ministerial conversations through covert listening devices.

His rapid rise provoked resentment, and was a factor that led to the fall of George Papandreou's government. In 1965, while the "Aspida" conspiracy within the Army, alleged by the political opposition to involve Andreas personally, was being investigated, George Papandreou moved to fire the defense minister and assume the post himself. King Constantine refused to endorse this move and essentially forced George Papandreou's resignation. Greece entered a period of political polarisation and instability, which ended with the coup d'état of 21 April 1967.

When the Greek Colonels led by George Papadopoulos seized power in April 1967, Andreas was incarcerated while his father George Papandreou was put under house arrest. George Papandreou, already at advanced age, died in 1968. Andreas' American wife, Margaret, pleaded with President Lyndon Johnson for Andreas' release; under American pressure, the military regime released Andreas on condition that he leave the country. In Paris, while in exile, Andreas Papandreou formed an "anti-dictatorship organization", the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), and toured the world rallying opposition to the Greek military regime. Despite his former American citizenship and academic career in the United States, Papandreou held the Central Intelligence Agency responsible for the 1967 coup and became increasingly critical of the U.S. Government.

File:Papandreou orator.jpg

Andreas Papandreou speaking in Greece, in September 3 1974, when he announced the formation of a new political party and his proposal for the Principles of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement.

In the early seventies, during the latter phase of the dictatorship in Greece, Papandreou, along with most leading Greek politicians, in exile or in Greece, opposed the process of political normalisation attempted by George Papadopoulos and his appointed PM, Spyros Markezinis. In August 6 1974, Andreas Papandreou called an extraordinary meeting of the National Congress of PAK in Winterthur, Switzerland, which decided its dissolution without announcing it publicly .

Papandreou returned to Greece after the fall of the junta in 1974, during metapolitefsi, and formed a new "radical" party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, or PASOK. Most of his former PAK companions, as well as members of other anti-dictatorial groups such as the Democratic Defense joined in the new party.

At that year's elections, PASOK received only 13.5% of the vote, but in 1977 it polled 25%, and Papandreou became Leader of the Opposition. At the 1981 elections, PASOK won a landslide victory over the conservative New Democracy Party, and Papandreou became Greece's first socialist Prime Minister.

In office, Papandreou backtracked from much of his campaign rhetoric and followed a more conventional approach. Greece did not withdraw from NATO, United States troops and military bases were not ordered out of Greece, and Greek membership in the European Economic Community continued. In domestic politics, Papandreou's government carried through sweeping refoms of social policy by expanding health care coverage (the "National Health System" was instituted), promoting state-subsidized tourism for lower-income families, and funding social establishments for the elderly. In a move strongly opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church, Papandreou introduced, for the first time in Greece, the process of civil marriage. Prior to the institution of civil marriages in Greece, the only legally recognized marriages were those conducted in the Greek Orthodox Church. Couples seeking a civil marriage had to get married outside Greece, generally in Italy. Also, under PASOK, the Greek State also appropriated real estate properties previously owned by the Church.

Papandreou introduced various reforms in the administration and curriculum of the Greek educational system, allowing students to participate in the election process for their professors and deans in the university, and abolishing tenure.

A major part of Papandreou's allagi (change) involved driving out the "old families" ("tzakia" literally: fireplaces using the traditional Greek expression for the genealogy of families), which allegedly influenced Greek politics from behind the scenes and belonged to the traditional Greek Right. At the same time, influential businessmen and entrepreneurs from "new families" emerged, such as George Koskotas (see Bank of Crete) and Sokratis Kokkalis, emerged, encouraged by the socialist government and supposedly sharing much of its populist ideology. The newer crop of business leaders were mostly involved with state organisations and state-owned enterprises, wherefrom most of their initial rise was due. They gained wider influence by acquiring control of news media and of popular Greek football teams. Many of their companies were given exclusive state contracts from the Greek state and public-owned monopolies, leading to the establishment of the popular press term diaploki (interconnection) which denoted the presumed strong connetions between the ruling political party, the media owners and state-driven businesses.

Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou on official visit with United States President William J. Clinton, Washington, April 1994. Dimitra Liani in the background

Papandreou was comfortably re-elected in 1985 with 46% of the vote, but, in the years to follow, his premiership became increasingly clouded by controversy and scandal. In 1989, he divorced his wife Margaret Papandreou and married Dimitra Liani, while in the same year he was indicted by Parliament in connection with a US$200 million Bank of Crete embezzlement scandal, and was accused of facilitating the embezzlement by ordering state corporations to transfer their holdings to the Bank of Crete, where the interest was allegedly skimmed off to benefit PASOK, and possibly some of its highest functionaries. Following the many repercussions of the so-called Koskotas scandal, the 1989 elections produced a deadlock, leading to a prolonged political crisis. Papandreou's PASOK's won 40% of the popular vote, compared to the rival New Democracy's 46%, and, due to changes made in electoral law one year before the elections by the then reigning PASOK administration, New Democracy was not able to form a government. In the wake of three consecutive elections between 1989 and 1990, the New Democracy leader, Constantine Mitsotakis, eventually received sufficient support to form a government. In January 1992, Papandreou himself was cleared of any wrongdoing in the [Bank of Crete|Koskotas scandal] after a 7-6 vote in the specially convened High Court trial, ordered by the Greek parliament, with the support of both main parties, New Democracy and PASOK.

Papandreou confounded his critics by winning the next general elections of October 1993 ; however, his fragile health kept him from exercising firm political leadership. He was hospitalized with advanced heart disease and kidney failure on November 20, 1995 and finally retired from office on January 16, 1996. He died on June 23, 1996, with his funeral procession producing an outpouring of public emotion.

Criticism

Papandreou's economic policies were characterized as socialist. PASOK nationalized industries and raised public spending, which led to a deterioration in public finances and to an increase of inflation to almost 22%; because of this, the drachma had to be devalued more than once. Unemployment doubled in his years as Greek prime minister to 6.6%.

PASOK and Andreas Papandreou walked out of the parliament when, in 1980, the New Democracy government, voted in favor of Greece joining the European Union. In the following years, when PASOK assumed power, Greece absorbed a significant level of EU funds. Papandreou's critics contend that the management of the EU funds was not successful and that, in part, they caused corruption. The two other European countries which joined the EU after Greece, Portugal and Spain, followed a different path. While at the beginning of the eighties, average income in Greece had been almost identical to Spain's and significantly higher than Portugal's, in 1995, Spain's average income was recorded as almost 20% higher, and Portugal had almost completely closed the gap.

International politics

Papandreou was co-creator in 1982 and subsequently an active participant in a movement promoted by the Parliamentarians for Global Action, the Initiative of the Six, which included, besides the Greek PM, Mexico's president Miguel de la Madrid, Argentina's PM Raúl Alfonsín, Sweden's PM Olof Palme, Tanzania's president Julius Nyerere and India's Indira Ghandi. The movement's stated objective was the "promotion of peace and progress for all mankind". After various initiatives, mostly directed at pressuring the United States and the Soviet Union to stop nuclear testing and reduce the level of nuclear arms, it eventually disbanded.

Papandreou's rhetoric was at times antagonistic to the United States. He was the first western prime minister to visit General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland. According to the Foreign Affairs magazine Papandreou went on record as saying that since the USSR is not a capitalist country "one cannot label it an imperialist power." According to Papandreou, "the Soviet Union represent[ed] a factor that restrict[ed] the expansion of capitalism and its imperialistic aims".

Papandreou supported the causes of various national liberation movements in the world, and agreed for Greece to host representatives offices of many such organisations . He supported the cause of "Palestinian liberation", met repeatedly with PLO Chairman Yaser Arafat and condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories.

Legacy

Andreas Papandreou was an intensely polarising figure, in Greece and abroad.

His supporters considered him a powerful orator and a radical political leader who served the working class, the elderly, and voters in some areas of rural Greece who found in him a champion for the marginsalised sectors of Greek society (the "non-privileged"). They warmed to his populist attacks on the rich and his blend of nationalist and socialist rhetoric. They praised Papandreou for exercising what they considered to be an independent foreign policy, which ostensibly elevated Greece's position internationally, especially among non-aligned nations. He affirmed Greece's independence in setting her own policy agenda, both internally and externally, free from any foreign domination, as was presumed to be the case in the past.

His opponents, conservative or liberal, dismissed him as a ruthless demagogue whose foreign policy was detrimental to Greece's standing amongst western allies. They suggested that his economic policies, and particularly the increases in public spending and minimum wages, ultimately ruined the Greek economy.

His opponents on the left, on the other hand, including the KKE, accused him of supporting, in practice, the agenda of NATO and the United States.

Papandreou's influence and the reforms of PASOK were instrumental to bringing Greece in line with the rest of Europe.

Andreas Papandreou is widely acknowledged as having shifted political power from the traditional conservative Greek Right, which had dominated Greek politics for decades, to a more populist and centre-left locus. Political forces which remained the so-called pariahs in politics as of the end of the Greek civil war, were given a chance to prove themselves in democratically elected governments. This shift in the Greek political landscape helped heal old civil war wounds; Greece became more pluralistic, and more in line with the political system of other western European countries.

Papandreou's successor in office, Costas Simitis, broke with a number of Papandreou's approaches, and was seen by many as more of a pragmatist and a technocrat, by comparison.

Papandreou's son, George Papandreou, was elected leader of PASOK in February 2004. At the 2004 Greek elections, some PASOK followers, in political rallies, invoked Papandreou's legacy with the chant "Andrea, zis! Esi mas odigis!" ("Andreas, you are still alive! You're leading us!").

External links

• The Andreas Papandreou Foundation
• Biography from pasok.grTemplate:El icon
• Tribute to Andreas PapandreouTemplate:El icon