May 8, 1958
GEORGIOS PAPANDREOU: The week of campaign rallies in Athens ended yesterday with speeches by the co-leaders of the liberals, Georgios Papandreou and Sophocles Venizelos, before large crowds in Syntagma Square. Papandreou addressed the crowds first and accused the leader of the National Radical Union (ERE), Constantine Karamanlis, of having claimed work done by others as his own when he had referred to his achievements of establishing stability, political normalcy and good administration, all of which existed before ERE came to power and which had been abolished over the past two years. As for the charge against his party of cooperating with the United Democratic Left (EDA) in 1956, Papandreou claimed that the ERE leader himself was to blame for that, due to the electoral law that existed at that time. He furthermore claimed that ERE had worked with EDA to spread reports that the strength of those two parties had increased at the expense of the Liberals. That had been due to the Liberals’ success in doing away with the polarization that the parties at the extreme ends of the political spectrum had tried to bring about.
