Greece Gets A New Constitution

U.S. Defense Secretary Clifford has admitted that America is supplying the Greek regime with large amounts of munitions. He said that no matter how repugnant the regime's politics are to the U.S., the regime will continue to receive such aid because of its strategic place in the fight against communism.

These are impressions of Greece which a Harvard graduate student brought home from a summer spent touring that nation, as he told them to Allyson Mae '69. The story is clearly biased against the regime, but, we hope, it's also biased in the favor of truth. The student discusses the campaign which the regime was waging to pass its new constitution, the antilibertarian aspects of the document, and American involvement with the regime. As expected, the constitution, which the Sept. 25 issue of Le Monde denounced for making Greece an "undemocratic democracy," was passed in a referendum last weekend, after this article was written.

EVEN Boss Daley's tactics of persuasion are tame next to the coervice pressures the military junta is exercising over the people of Greece.

Gigantic signs reading "Nai" (Yes) are plastered all over the majestic Greek countryside, part of the regime's efforts to get the populace to approve the constitution.

Greek newspapers and other media are rigorously censored and merely act as mouthpieces for the government.

Official propagandists from Athens are briskly at work in all the larger cities and villages, extolling the virtues of the constitution at staged mass meetings.

Everyone who lives within 300 miles of a voting place (and that's practically everybody) must vote or face going to jail. The junta has furthermore created such an oppressive atmosphere that citizens are simply too terrified to vote "no" for fear that they would be singled out for reprisals.

The most terrifying thing I saw first-hand was a mass rally in a medium-size city in the north of Greece. I later learned from some Greek acquaintances that this was typical of the tactics being practiced all over the country.

Troops always attend these "popular rallies. On the way to the meeting places the army shouts slogans like "Long live the Revolution, April 21, 1967"--the day the colonels took over, of course. This time, officers apparently had instructed the 2,000 soldiers to mingle with the crowd in groups of no more than two, and to take off their hats, in order not to be prominent and not to be identified as soldiers in the newspaper photographs.

Most of the city's residents were there--they even brought their kids. They didn't take any chances. It would not be healthy for them to be found elsewhere while a rally was going on.

From where I was standing, right in the middle of the crowd, I could see a clumsily-assembled group of 100 people who punctuated the speech at just the right points with tumultuous applause. The rest of the crowd, in marked contrast to the traditional ebulience of Greek political meetings, were passive. Most people around me did not applaud; people looking out of windows did nothing but glumly watch.

Even the soldiers made no unnecessary noise. They would go through clapping motions without letting their hands make a sound.

The speaker, Stylianos Patakos, Minister of the Interior and one of the leaders of the regime, asked the crowd at one point if anyone wanted to vote "No" to reject the constitution. Complete silence. "You know, it would help us if you voted No," the speaker said. "Then we would have another 16 months in order to construct a new constitution to submit to you. And that new one will be stricter and less democratic than the one we are giving you now."

THE SPEAKER also said Greece will benefit from its years of military control. One of the few who were cheering shouted, "You can let the Army run Greece for a hundred years--and that wouldn't be too long." No one doubts that the Army will want to control Greece for a considerable time to come.

Not a single sign saying "No" is tolerated anywhere in the nation. Opposition is expressed only in hand made signs in remote corners where they might escape official notice. A monstrous blue neon sign reading "Yes" is perched on a hill overlooking the Acropolis right outside of Athens.

The junta is thus trying to extract a big vote for the constitution with the positive stimulus of their propaganda barrage. They are also using the negative idea, which is really a thinly-disguised threat, that a "No" vote would result in a stricter alternative. The ruling clique is suppressing all dissenting opinion, and commanding a network of spies and informers throughout the country. Finally, they are capitalizing on the captive vote of soldiers, civil servants, and teachers--all of whom are under the junta's thumb.

Through all my travels in Greece my overwhelming impression was of the reticence of the people. They just won't talk to anyone unless they know him quite well. Many have been imprisoned for long periods for seemingly trivial offenses. The papers carried word of a man convicted of subverting the state because he played a record by Theodorakis, the greatest modern Greek composer, who happens to be a communist. A similar five year sentence was delivered against a man who had spoken out against the colonels on a public street.

Villages are the places where the tensions are worst, simply because, just like in American small towns, all the people know everyone else's business. The Greek countryside is quiet, but it is the quiet of a graveyard.

Young people throughout Greece are passive, for the most part. There is no overt action against the regime. Their protest mainly takes the from of making jokes against the colonels, who allegedly lead lurid personal lives. A small number of pamphlets circulate around Athens but there is no real, well-organized opposition. No leader exists who can act as a focal point for resistance.

PERSONAL liberties seem to be guaranteed under the new constitution but a close reading reveals several disturbing aspects. All individuals and communications media have complete freedom of speech except that they may not speak out against "the existing social order," i.e., the junta. What it means to "speak out" is vaguely defined, but it apparently will include all forms of criticism.

The media will also be forbidden to criticize any public official unless they can prove, without a doubt, that it was in the interest of Greece. In effect, there will be complete censorship.

All labor strikes will be outlawed. The junta repeatedly uses the rhetoric of saving the Greek Christian Civilization from the old days when workers were constantly on strike and students were always throwing stones. The constitution restricts unions from organizing against the interests of the existing social order. It's quite true that Greece was strike-ridden before the revolution and that walk-outs seriously worried many Greeks, but most observers didn't think in terms of the strikes being dangerous enough to overthrow the government.

The constitution also establishes a court which will decide on the legitimacy of the various political parties. The Communist Party is forbidden. The number of deputies in the national assembly has been sharply reduced, thus weakening the existing parties, according to critics of the junta, by not allowing them to send as many of their partisans to participate in government.

The document promises elections but does not say when they will be held.

The new constitution is based on the old 1952 constitution and is cleverly written to conceal its authoritarian bent. One clause excludes from the Chamber of Deputies all men who don't possess a degree stating they've completed what would be a high school education in America. This will, of course, effectively exclude members of the lower and much of the middle class from being elected to the Chamber.

The position of the new deputies, when and if elections are held, will also be significantly weakened by the constitution. They may now be arrested without the consent of the Chamber. Many observers think this situation puts them directly under the control of the ruling junta.

ON THE WHOLE, the constitution rationalizes the powers which the junta seized in April, 1967. It seems to insure liberties, but there are too many loopholes which the ruling group could use at will to stop any burgconing movement toward freedom. The new document significantly centralizes the government, which has become more legal but no less dictatorial.

Although the junta originally said the revolution was necessary to save the monarchy, young King Constantine is now in exile in Italy. He fled Greece after attempting to seize power from the junta on Dec. 13, 1967. Under the 1952 document the king had a lot of influence on paper, just as the King of England does today, but his role was supposed to be largely symbolic. Constantine, however, interpreted the constitution literally and personally exercised a lot of power. The new document, on the other hand, strips the king of all authority and even states that he must be only a figurehead. The junta itself has assumed all the power Constantine used to have.

Georges Papandreou, Greece's former prime minister and leader of the Center Union Party, was jailed at the outbreak of the revolution and has only recently been freed. His son, Andreas, the leader of the left wing of the Center Union, is also free and reportedly in Sweden.

Not everyone is against the regime. Student anti-communists, young and ambitious army officers, and tradition minded villagers terrified of the on-slaught of urbanization form the base of the regime's supporters. Greeks are very certain that this is not the regular kind of conservative reaction to the danger of a Communist take-over. They point out that the Rightist party of Greece does not support the regime, although certainly some of their support comes from individuals of that party. Even those supporters grant that the junta has been extraordinarily clumsy, but they think the colonels had the right idea when they took over in 1967 when the situation was volatile and allegedly open to Soviet pressure.

Just lately, supporters of the regime received a shot in the arm from the Soviet Union when it invaded Czechoslovakia. Ever since then they can point to that tragic incident any say, "So, aren't even you an anti-communist now?"

Widespread anxiety has slowed the Greek economy to a walk. The government keeps prices low, so most people can buy enough to live on. But no one is interested in buying anything, outside of subsistence goods, except land. Nobody has respect for the Greek currency. Many people said they were hoarding British Gold Pounds for the period after the regime. The junta's claim that the tourist trade was "much better in 1968 than in the previous year" is true but there still aren't nearly as many tourists as before the revolution.

I've saved the following fact for the end because it is the one thing so far that I didn't see myself. During the summer, however, I became very close to a young Greek enlisted man, and he swore that United States military aid was indispensible for the regime.

My friend said, "The Army is competely armed and supplied by the United States. Bullets are given to us from American boxes, lubrication oil for the American M-1 guns is given to us in American cans, visual aids for basic training are American drawings.

U.S. Defense Secretary Clifford has admitted that American is supplying the Greek regime with large amounts of munitions. He said that no matter how repugnant the regime's politics are to the U.S., the regime will continue to receive such aid because of its strategic place in the fight against communism. Some Greeks even believe the CIA played a decisive role in planning and contributing arms and money to the revolution. America does not send arms directly to Greece but rather uses the convenient agency of NATO, which supplies Greece with 75 percent of its weapons.

American influence undoubtedly had some part in the regime's decision to grant the Greek people a constitution, no matter how flimsy it is. Yet Greek people are desperately afraid that the document will be hailed the world over as a step towards democracy. The fact is, according to Greeks, that the fraudulent constitution is merely a trick by the regime to give their rule a legal rationale and to maintain the all important American support.

The Americans thus joined the distinguished tradition of the Romans and Turks who first adopted the vaucs of classical Greece and then, directly or indirectly, occupied the land of the Delphi because it happened to be a strategic piece of real estate