Hamlet: A pop monarchy
In his «tragical history,» Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, spends almost all his brief life on stage brooding over his misfortune in having to set things right in his country. The rottenness in the whole state that he laments stems from the very personal fact that his father, the king, has died and his mother has married her late husband’s brother. His curse is that he is never quite sure he can simply go ahead and kill his uncle, Claudius, on the strength of the questionable testimony of a ghost. So, until events develop so as to force Hamlet to confront and kill Claudius or himself be killed, he lopes about, making grandiose statements about life’s difficulties, despising his mother for giving in to Claudius’s advances and generally acting like a stepson locked out of an inheritance. Shakespeare’s play is a mountain of achievement, perhaps the greatest work by one of the handful of greatest poets who ever lived. Among its irresistible strengths is the richness of the poetry itself, the irrevocable dramatic construction (or plot), and the sense it conveys of humanity’s great passions being played out in a world of confusion and darkness, where nothing is certain and no one is safe. All of these riches are conveyed in the play’s great soliloquies, where the protagonist ponders aloud his situation and man’s condition, agonizing about what course of action he should follow. There was some of this in Costas Simitis’s overly dramatized appearance on television last Monday. Midway through his government’s latest four-year term, the prime minister chose the forum of an interview with four journalists of his choice, in an appearance shown live simultaneously on several national channels. It was as if Hamlet’s statements were interspersed with questions by other players (the thoughtful friend Horatio, the shifty courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the combative rival Laertes). One would have thought that the nation had come under a concerted terrorist attack and Simitis had to address it in prime time, when most viewers would prefer to watch the current crop of layabouts scratching themselves on reality-show couches. But instead of a state-of-the-union presentation, we got a soliloquy from Hamlet the king. Because, Greece, you see, is in great shape. There are no pressing problems or dangerous issues to confront. The Greeks do not need to chart a course into the future, a future that seems very murky right now, only two years into the new millennium. Simitis presented his government’s achievements over the last two years, saying that much had been done but that much more still had to be done. He said that Greece had been decades behind other European countries when the PASOK party, under Andreas Papandreou, came into power in 1981 and that not all the problems could be solved quickly. He pledged that over the next two years the government’s priority would be to improve the economic and social standing of the Greeks so as to bring them closer to their European counterparts. Simitis did not go into widespread corruption in the public sector, the slowdown and dilution of structural reforms that would be aimed at making the economy more competitive, the fact that his ministers do not seem to be wholehearted in their support of the Athens 2004 Olympic preparations, Greece’s problems with its neighbors, and the dangerous situation evolving in the Middle East. So secure are we in our present circumstances that our foreign minister, George Papandreou, is planning to go off with the Turkish foreign minister, Ismail Cem, on a peace mission to the Middle East. The intention is to show the Israelis and Palestinians that two traditional rivals can swan about saying nice things about each other. (Of course, if Greeks and Turks were locked in the death embrace of the Middle East protagonists, we wonder at what the two foreign ministers would have to say to each other. The hard work that has gone into the gradual but still wispy improvement of ties between Greece and Turkey should not, in this hack’s opinion, be pegged like a butterfly to the burning steel of truly intractable problems.) But Simitis is like Hamlet in something else, too. He is absorbed, to an unnatural degree, by family business. And that family is PASOK, the pop-monarchy founded by Andreas Papandreou as a personal vehicle in 1974 and which, against all odds, has continued under Simitis since 1996, when Papandreou died. It is as if Hamlet ascended the throne in a natural succession that was not expected: Everyone expected PASOK to fall apart after Papandreou had left the scene. (Now his son, the foreign minister, is touted as a favorite to succeed Simitis and so confirm the legitimacy of the Simitis era.) But Simitis’s achievement in hanging on – and winning two national elections to boot – has never been accepted by his rivals in the party. Having managed to keep the party together and also in power, Simitis has continually had to deal with their sniping. They, judging him against the charismatic, populist Papandreou, see themselves as more fit to make the incredible promises that kept PASOK in power. So they are the ones who brood, making rude comments about Simitis as if he is the usurper, Claudius, who is sleeping with the queen, who is personified by PASOK. Like Hamlet, everyone involved believes that their problems are the country’s woes. And, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, their self-absorption with PASOK business does become the country’s misfortune. Indicative of this is the very fact of Monday’s news conference. It was held in an effort to sway public opinion at a time when polls are showing the conservative opposition party surging ahead by about 7 or 8 percent. Furthermore, the polls show that about 7 percent of PASOK voters are defecting to the conservatives. This suggests that Simitis, in allowing party General Secretary Costas Laliotis to run a campaign in which the Socialists can blame everything that happens or does not happen in the country on New Democracy, is losing the power base provided by the centrist voters who assured PASOK’s election twice. Earlier defections also nearly got New Democracy elected two years ago. And yet, in the face of this, Simitis allows PASOK to keep alienating people who voted for him because of his promise to reform the country. Instead, the government has tried to appease the worst elements in its ranks. To no avail. Privatization has petered out. Social security reforms are based on granting more benefits while fudging how these will paid for. Tax reform proposals by a committee of experts sent shudders through Cabinet members afraid that they might face a rebellion by the party rank and file similar to that which prompted huge introspection after initial pension reforms were announced a little over a year ago. In other words, our reforms change little, because the government is afraid of the reaction that every change provokes. But the reaction – the strikes, the protests, the fury – comes anyhow. So, in fear of reactions, we get no reforms to speak of but plenty of reaction instead. This is a truly impressive feat of social engineering, similar to Hamlet’s huffing and puffing and casual murder of Polonius and Ophelia, two murders which bring him no closer to avenging his father, restoring legitimacy to the kingdom or getting down to governing. As extras in the play, we too often live under the illusion that all the bouncing about on the stage does not really have an impact on how the drama ends, nor how this will affect our lives. We live in the hope that things are going smoothly in Greece and that we really do not have any serious problems to deal with. To stretch the analogy even further, there are no domestic problems that need our leadership’s full attention (there has been no regicide, Hamlet is king), and the Norwegian army is not pounding at the gate. If things are so fine, then of course our princelings have nothing better to do than jockey for position when this Hamlet shuffles off the mortal coil. And the rest of us have nothing to worry about other than the fact that even though Simitis might come across as frank, honest and capable in his interview, despite the fact that things really are improving gradually in Greece, we and our commentators are determined to see malaise all over the land. Perhaps it is because all this fooling about over minor issues has trapped us in a bad mood, capable of seeing, like Hamlet, our metaphorical Denmark as a prison. For, as he declares to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, «There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.» We can only hope that if things turn bad our leaders will spring into action.
