The shame of the colonels, the wisdom of Giorgos Rallis and the lasting legacy of Constantine Karamanlis
Tomorrow, April 21, marks 35 years since the colonels’ coup which thrust Greece, the cradle of democracy, into the darkness of a seven-year dictatorship. There are television programs devoted to keeping memories alive, with videos of people who are no longer with us and discussions with those who experienced the fury of the dictatorship in the form of exile, imprisonment and torture. One of the protagonists was former Premier Giorgos Rallis, who was public order minister in the government of Panayiotis Kanellopoulos at the time of the coup. He was arrested in the early morning, confined to his house, imprisoned and later exiled to the island of Kasos, where his family joined him. He recorded everything that happened during the dictatorship in his diary, in a lively first-person narrative. Constantine Karamanlis returned to Greece on July 24, 1974, ushering in the return to democratic rule, during which Rallis became prime minister and Karamanlis was elected president. Close to the ill-fated date of the coup is the fourth anniversary of the death of Karamanlis on April 23, 1998. On the eve of the anniversary, his beloved brother Achilleas, his closest colleague, ambassador and deputy Petros Molyvias (vice president and president respectively of the Constantine Karamanlis Foundation), and political colleagues, such as Rallis, will hold a private memorial service at his grave in the foundation’s garden in Filothei. On April 24, the board of the foundation is organizing a conference presenting Karamanlis’s work in the field of culture, which will be by invitation only. The speakers will be French academic Maurice Dryon, the first biographer of Karamanlis, and Mikis Theodorakis, composer and peace activist. Such anniversaries are an opportunity for meetings among the people who made Greece what it is today, with the flag of united Europe now being held by Karamanlis’s opponents, who were not in favor of joining the European Union back then. Journalists from state and privately owned television stations asked Rallis to take part in programs about April 21. With his usual directness, this time he refused to speak to «ears that will not hear» about his own «Hours of Responsibility» (the title of his two historic books). This is a classic Rallis comment, and so we quote it in full: «Already 35 years have passed since April 21. Nowadays, the country is facing many thorny problems. It’s time to deal with them and not to distract the public with past events which are no longer of any interest.» A journalist who insisted, saying, «We younger people don’t know about them,» received this answer: «You only have to read what has been written about that period, for example, in my book ‘My Diary: The Time of Dictatorship,’ which was published in 1997.» This advice could be followed by young and old, considering the savage censorship imposed during the dictatorship. The Greek news was only in the foreign press and the radio programs, like those of Takis Lambrias on the BBC and Pavlos Bakoyiannis on Deutsche Welle. Both died prematurely – the former of illness, the second shot by terrorists. Indeed, there are still thorny problems to be solved.
