A PR stunt
Most Greeks agree that the departure of Costas Simitis from the PASOK leadership two months before general elections and the projection of Foreign Minister George Papandreou as the agent of change – as the alternative solution that the Greek people deserve – is little more than a public relations stunt. They also agree that a change of leadership in the ruling party, without any fundamental structural change or the removal of the party nomenclature – which contributes to corruption and perpetuates the rule of the existing elite – is not only insubstantial but illusory. And they agree that this move aimed to defraud Greek voters and to usurp their trust (and not for the first time in PASOK’s five electoral victories since 1981). If a significant proportion of citizens still believed in Simitis’s honesty about the reasons for his withdrawal, and were inclined to put their faith in Papandreou’s potential to bring about change and to purge the world of politics, they must have changed their minds by now or at least started having serious doubts about their earlier convictions. The enthusiasm with which most state-funded media have greeted the advent of Papandreou is not merely unprecedented – it is also misguided and impertinent and wholly lacking in sincerity and boldness…
