Letter from Thessaloniki
Greece is in need of an energy policy. But first the government needs to decide whose job it is to run it. That was made clear last week by a rare spectacle: The government called in the army to help warm up the Ionian island of Cephalonia after the whole area – including the island of Ithaca – was left in the dark for almost a week when bad weather brought down several electricity poles. Over the weekend citizens of Captain Corelli’s island (the John Madden film starring Nicolas Cage was shot there) demonstrated angrily against authorities. «It seems we are going to stay that way until March or May,» a local energy activist told television cameras. The row about electricity has long been brewing. Just a week ago ousted former Public Power Corporation (PPC) director Yiannis Paleokrassas – a former MP with ruling New Democracy and a finance minister in the early 1990s, who also served as European environment commissioner from 1993-95 – lashed out at the government, specifically at Development Minister Dimitris Sioufas, by claiming that the strategy followed to deregulate the energy market is playing into the hands of certain private interests. Corruption again. He criticized the plans as «incomplete» and «carrying the seeds of self-destruction.» And it is not merely such accusations, or the icy weather, that is to blame for frosty relations between major government ministers. The tensions burst into the open months ago when the usual forecasters started spreading rumors of a government reshuffle. The words: «It’s time for a change» have always been, in Costas Karamanlis’s mind, the greatest threat to a second term of his government. Lest voters think New Democracy has run out of radical ideas, some more of them have just emerged, the energy question among them. Not long ago, speaking of a proposed energy bill, PASOK-affiliated MP Stefanos Manos, a former New Democracy minister, said the bill was a step forward but still inadequate. «The bill does bring on a degree of deregulation, but a small one, just to keep the European Union from complaining. I do not believe that tariffs will come down for consumers, for the simple reason that PPC tariffs are lower than production costs subsidized by the state,» he said. Manos added that PPC should change orientation and consider building small nuclear or hydrogen power plants. «Otherwise, we shall become major importers of electricity,» he warned. Now, just imagine all the fuss nuclear power plants in Greece would bring. What a week it was. Pianist Aldo Ciccolini first came to my attention with his Mozart piano sonatas plus a selection of keyboard works by that most mocking satirist of music, Erik Satie (1866-1935). Of course, it was all recorded. So it was an enormous pleasure to listen to this exceptionally talented Italian pianist, long a resident of France, live at the Athens Concert Hall. The ability to play «serious» music surpassingly well is not necessarily awarded to every good musician. The worst label one can stick on a pianist is «intellectual» – a hazy term that is almost a warning: Beware, you are obliged to do some work at this recital. Not so with Aldo Ciccolini, on whom you can also hardly stick that insidious label «virtuoso» which I heard pronounced by a certain lady during the intermission. How on earth can one use similar expressions that are invariably smudged with special pleading? Unexpected luck had it that I dined with him after the concert with four friends. It was an agreeable small group. «You resemble Schnabel very much, you know,» he told me. What a huge compliment. Artur Schnabel, one of the greatest pianists of all times, lived, played piano and taught in Berlin for 35 years. «But he died in 1951. Did you ever meet him personally?» I countered. Sure, Ciccolini met him in New York, when he was a very young pianist. A Jew who fled Berlin in April of 1933, Schnabel moved to New York. He did not find it easy to adapt to America, although he was thankful that most of his family had been saved by the generosity of the American government. Schnabel wrote in a draft of a 1941 article: «One of the many strange and striking features of the ‘American Way’ is – to me – the waste, squander, frustration and neglect of certain talents. Highly gifted persons are always expected, seduced or blackmailed – to be fair, mostly in vain – to come down from the level to which they have been assigned by nature. I am too old to adjust myself to the ‘American Way’ – though it is probably not a problem of age – and I am also not eager to become more adaptable.» Along with, no doubt, millions of other viewers, I watched on TV yesterday the Australian Open men’s final where «Divine Federer confronted the 13th God,» as a title of the British Guardian newspaper reported. Marcos Pagdatis, the 20-year-old from Limassol, has been added to the 12 Greek gods of Mount Olympus. Move over Hermes, Heracles, Poseidon. Sure enough the Swiss maestro Roger Federer is the big winner, yet the improbable, quick progress of the youthful Cypriot is something that made both Greeks and Cypriots proud. And with George A. Papandreou – he was the only candidate, therefore sure – the now president of Socialist International, the worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labor parties, we might, who knows, even count a 14th God.
