Patrick Comerford
AS A BOY growing up in the 1950s, I was in awe of the Wexford hurlers, the Rackard brothers, and those epic teams in what Nicky Furlong describes as “the Greatest Hurling Decade”.
Those memories have been hallowed in Billy Roche’s play, Poor Beast in the Rain, and were brought to life again with yesterday’s All Ireland Hurling Final against Limerick.
There is nothing to stir Wexford pride like watching the men in Purple and Gold or hearing the band strike up The Boys of Wexford and Boolavogue, and it is no coincidence that the associations between Wexford’s sporting achievements and the memories of 1798 should be recorded by the same local historian.
Nicky Furlong is the author of The Greatest Hurling Decade. But it is in his biography of Father John Murphy that he recalls the origins of a persistent tradition invoked by Wexford supporters against Kilkenny in inter-county hurling matches.
A dejected Father Murphy and his exhausted supporters had trekked as far as north Kilkenny, and were betrayed as they slept on the hills of Kilcumney, duped into believing that they were being protected by the local colliers.
Watery Kilkenny Men
During the night, the colliers deserted the Wexford rebels, every man of them from the “camp”. According to Nicky Furlong, the colliers took every gun and pike with all the gunpowder they could carry away with them from the camp. “What gunpowder they could not take with them, they pissed on”.
In all, Wexford have played 26 Leinster hurling finals against Kilkenny. And yet, the greatest abuse was reserved not for the Kilkenny supporters, but for Cork. And this was so because the memory of “Tom the Devil” was alive in Wexford a century after the rising.
Thomas Honam, a sergeant with the North Cork militia earned his reputation as “Tom the Devil” for his expertise in torture and his perfection of the pitchcap. Old men who had their heads sheared and had been pitch capped as croppies were still to be seen in Co Wexford in the 1860s, and respect for them and the memory of “Tom the Devil” fired Wexford people in, the decade leading up to the first centenary of the rising.
In 1890, Castlebridge won the county hurling championship and so became the first Wexford team to play in an All Ireland Hurling Final. The 1890 final was played at Clonturk on November 16th, and Cork was represented by Augabullogue. Wexford were behind in the match but looked like drawing level with the prowess of two of their fiercest players, Tom Murphy and Will Neville. The Wexford supporters were emphatic when they accused the Cork supporters of being descendants of the North Cork Militia. As a ballad of the time puts it:
Tom Murphy and Will Neville
Began to lay them level,
When they thought of Tom the Devil,
With his pitch cap and his shears.
The Cork team were forced off the pitch by the Wexford jeers. But at that stage the scoreline stood at 1-6 to 2-2 against Wexford, and the unfinished match was awarded to Cork.
Wexford returned to Clonturk again for the 1891 final, played on February 28th, 1892. This time Crossabeg represented the county, and the team included Tom Murphy and Will Neville once again. But Kerry’s Ballyduff won 2-3 to 1-5 after a half hour’s extra play.
Wexford’s first All Ireland Hurling title was not won until 1910, when Castlebridge beat Limerick’s Castleconnel at Jones’s Road 7-0 to 6-2. Once again, the memory of 1798 must have been high in the minds of the Wexford supporters. Big Jem Mythen of Monawilling, who scored the winning goal against Limerick that year, has a special place in ’98 lore according to local historian Brian Cleary. And that place is recorded in Brian Cleary's account of the Battle of Oulart in The Past, the journal of the Ui Cinsealaigh Historical Society.
Where Murphy Stood
As part of the 1948 commemorations for the 150th anniversary of the 1798 Rising, Jim Mythen, along with Paddy Sutton, Phil Quirke, Bud Farl and Ned Ryan, erected a monument in a corner of a field between Monawilling and Oulart, close to the place where tradition says Father John Murphy stood during the Battle of Oulart on Sunday, May 27th, 1798.
The monument stands close to Father Murphy’s Well, and, according to Brian Cleary, the monument, the well and the entire battle area at Oulart are being included in the Sli Charman, the long walk planned across Co Wexford.
After their 1910 victory over Limerick, the Wexford hurlers had to wait until 1918 to return to an All-Ireland hurling final.
Once again, they faced Limerick, but the Wexford selection was trounced 9-5 to 1-3 by Newcastle West.
Defeat was sweetened that year by Wexford’s sixth successive appearance in an All-Ireland Senior Football final and the fourth successive football title won for the county by the Blues and Whites of Wexford town: having been defeated by Kerry in 1913 and 1914, Wexford won four times in a row from 1915.
With these record-breaking exploits, hurling took second place to football throughout the 1920s, the 1930s and well into the 1940s. In 1948, the Wexford final with a team that included Nicky Rackard. But Wexford’s greatest triumph that year was to see a football tournament organised to coincide with the 150th anniversary commemorations of 1798. By coincidence, Wexford reached the final, which was not played until 1949, when the team, with Martin Comerford in goal, was defeated in front of 36,000 by three points by mighty Meath.
Few could have foreseen the great revival in Wexford hurling that year too. The dual football and hurling heroes of the county included Nicky Rackard, Mick Hanlon, Padge Kehoe, Bobby Donovan, and Sam “Wilkie” Thorpe from Vinegar Hill.
The Three Rackards
The hurlers of the 1950s reached the All Ireland final in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, with three Rackard brothers playing on each occasion and Wexford returning victorious in 1955, when Galway were defeated, and in 1956, when Cork were the losers. And there were Leinster senior titles too in 1951, 1954, 1955, and 1956.
Hurling fever swept the whole county in the early 1950s. Even Wexford town, until then a football stronghold, saw the founding of its first hurling team at Faythe Harriers. Nicky Furlong recalls how he even togged out as centre forward in the blue and black of Wexford Wanderers Rugby Football Club for an unofficial match against Young Irelands at Park Lane.
There were All Ireland hurling victories again in 1960 and 1968 against Tipperary. But there was no glory for the county like the stunning records of the 1910s and the 1950s.
Now, wouldn’t another Wexford victory in 1998 be a good way to mark the 200th anniversary of 1798?
This ‘Irishman’s Diary’ was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Monday 2 September 1996
PATRICK COMERFORD: an online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
02 September 1996
20 July 1996
An Irishman’s Diary: CP Cavafy
An Irishman’s Diary
Patrick Comerford
CP Cavafy ... a portrait by David Hockney
IT IS HARD to imagine that modern Egypt dates from 1799, when Napoleon drove out the Turks. It is even harder to imagine that until this century, the port city of Alexandria was one of the major centres of Greek culture and civilisation.
In a heated conversation late one night or early some morning in a taverna in Crete, I was told pointedly by a Greek whose grandparents came from the city that “there were Greeks living in Alexandria when Moses was a boy.”
The city, of course, takes its name from Alexander the Great. But it is well to remember that Cleopatra was not an Egyptian but a Greek, and that in classical times Alexandria was as purely Hellenic as Ptolemy, the founder of the dynasty of Greek monarchs which ruled the city for generations. This first Ptolemy was determined to make his capital the world centre of culture, the “Glory of the Ptolemies”:
The mentor city, the Hel-
lenic world’s acme, wisest in all the arts, in all:
philosophy.
In the mid 19th century, Greeks controlled the commercial life of Cairo, Khartoum and Alexandria, and in 1900, there were still 20,000 Greeks in Alexandria.
It is no accident, therefore, that Constantine Cavafy, hailed by Kimon Friar as “the undisputed founder of modern Greek poetry”, was born in Alexandria in 1863 and lived there for most for of his life, living in declining grandeur as a civil servant until his death in 1933. When his relatives, scandalised by the neighbourhood, implored him to leave his flat at 19 Rue Lepius, he went to the window drew back the curtain and asked. Where else could I be better situated than here, amidst these three centres of existence, a brothel, a church which forgives, and a hospital where you?
Craved recognition
During his life, Cavafy craved public recognition. He was introduced to English readers early in the century by F.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Lawrence, and Arnold Toynbee, and he is the genius loci in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. But his own sister forbade her daughter to read, her Uncle Constantine's, disreputable verses, scandalised by his homosexuality, decadence and rejection of the Orthodox Church.
Cavafy went unrecognised and without appreciation from the Athenian literati until some time after the publication of his first collected edition in 1935, two years after his death.
Today, he is read in every Greek school, and schoolchildren easily recite poems such as Ithaka, Waiting for the Barbarians, The City, and The god abandons Anthony. He has been popularised among English language readers with translations by Peter Bien, Kimon Friar, John Mavrogordato, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, among others, and major studies by Friar, Sherrard, Christopher Robinson of Christ Church, Oxford, and Peter Bien of Dartmouth. His popularity was confirmed when poems by Cavafy were read at the funeral of Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
Yet little attention has been given to a translation of 33 of Cavafy’s poems by the Irish poet, Desmond O’Grady. O’Grady, who was born in Ireland in 1935, later travelled as a student and teacher throughout Europe, America and Egypt, where he taught at the American, University of Cairo and the University of Alexandria.
In recent years, with a grant from the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, he was able to accept an invitation from the Greek poet Kostis Moskof to go back to Alexandria.
Through the tireless efforts of Moskof, the Hellenic Foundation and other admirers of Cavafy’s poetry, and his cultural legacy, Cavafy’s house at 10 Rue Lepsius (now Sharm elSheykli) has been restored to what it looked like when the poet lived there and has been turned into a museum and library in his memory.
Returning to Egypt and the English Department of the American University in Cairo, O’Grady completed his translation of a selection of Cavafy’s poems, and Alternative Manners, his version of 33 Cavafy poems, was published in 1993 by the Hellenic Society, Athens Alexandria. Unfortunately, much to his regret, the proofs were never properly corrected. And so the book was never put on the market commercially and has never been reviewed in newspapers.
Readers, forgive
He feels Alternative Manners “reads like Greek ruins” and asks readers now to “please forgive, and overlook, and correct.” But, he concedes modestly, the collection has its admirers. “Greek people who know their Cavafy and who have read it found my Hiberno English very suited to Cavafy’s Alexandrian Greek, and closer to the text of Cavafy’s language than standard British and American translations.”
A reading of two of Cavafy’s best known poems illustrates the particular insights and turn of phrase which an Irish translator can bring to his work.
His translation of Ithaka loses the references by Friar and Keeley and Sherrard to Laistrygonians and Cyclops; instead, they become “cannibal bogeymen met in half light” and “those with one eye, open for their main chance.” The “Phoenician trading stations” or “market places” of the other translators become “ports you’ve not dreamed of” and “every city”.
In Waiting for the Barbarians, Sherrard and Keeley have the city fathers “assembled in the forum” and Friar has them mustered in the forum but O’Grady has them “waiting, here in the square.” Instead of the barbarians being dazzled, they are not impressed by “bamboozle”. And, instead of rhetoric and public speaking or “eloquence and public speeches”, O’Grady speaks of boring baloney.
Secretary to Pound
For some years, Desmond O’Grady was secretary to the American poet Ezra Pound in his exile in Italy. Now he lives in Kinsale, but regards Greece as his second home. His work as a poet has, of course, been recognised at home, where he is a member of Aosdana, and where he has been back for the opening of “Waves of the Sea”, the new writers’ and translators’ centre.
His earlier frustration with the printers handling of Alternative Manners could be rectified if an Irish publisher found an interest in the book. But in the meantime, he can take comfort from the theme in Cavafy’s Ithaka: the journey, not the destination, is what constitutes our true reward.
This ‘Irishman’s Diary’ was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 20 July 1996
Patrick Comerford
IT IS HARD to imagine that modern Egypt dates from 1799, when Napoleon drove out the Turks. It is even harder to imagine that until this century, the port city of Alexandria was one of the major centres of Greek culture and civilisation.
In a heated conversation late one night or early some morning in a taverna in Crete, I was told pointedly by a Greek whose grandparents came from the city that “there were Greeks living in Alexandria when Moses was a boy.”
The city, of course, takes its name from Alexander the Great. But it is well to remember that Cleopatra was not an Egyptian but a Greek, and that in classical times Alexandria was as purely Hellenic as Ptolemy, the founder of the dynasty of Greek monarchs which ruled the city for generations. This first Ptolemy was determined to make his capital the world centre of culture, the “Glory of the Ptolemies”:
The mentor city, the Hel-
lenic world’s acme, wisest in all the arts, in all:
philosophy.
In the mid 19th century, Greeks controlled the commercial life of Cairo, Khartoum and Alexandria, and in 1900, there were still 20,000 Greeks in Alexandria.
It is no accident, therefore, that Constantine Cavafy, hailed by Kimon Friar as “the undisputed founder of modern Greek poetry”, was born in Alexandria in 1863 and lived there for most for of his life, living in declining grandeur as a civil servant until his death in 1933. When his relatives, scandalised by the neighbourhood, implored him to leave his flat at 19 Rue Lepius, he went to the window drew back the curtain and asked. Where else could I be better situated than here, amidst these three centres of existence, a brothel, a church which forgives, and a hospital where you?
Craved recognition
During his life, Cavafy craved public recognition. He was introduced to English readers early in the century by F.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, T.E. Lawrence, and Arnold Toynbee, and he is the genius loci in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. But his own sister forbade her daughter to read, her Uncle Constantine's, disreputable verses, scandalised by his homosexuality, decadence and rejection of the Orthodox Church.
Cavafy went unrecognised and without appreciation from the Athenian literati until some time after the publication of his first collected edition in 1935, two years after his death.
Today, he is read in every Greek school, and schoolchildren easily recite poems such as Ithaka, Waiting for the Barbarians, The City, and The god abandons Anthony. He has been popularised among English language readers with translations by Peter Bien, Kimon Friar, John Mavrogordato, Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, among others, and major studies by Friar, Sherrard, Christopher Robinson of Christ Church, Oxford, and Peter Bien of Dartmouth. His popularity was confirmed when poems by Cavafy were read at the funeral of Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
Yet little attention has been given to a translation of 33 of Cavafy’s poems by the Irish poet, Desmond O’Grady. O’Grady, who was born in Ireland in 1935, later travelled as a student and teacher throughout Europe, America and Egypt, where he taught at the American, University of Cairo and the University of Alexandria.
In recent years, with a grant from the Cultural Relations Committee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, he was able to accept an invitation from the Greek poet Kostis Moskof to go back to Alexandria.
Through the tireless efforts of Moskof, the Hellenic Foundation and other admirers of Cavafy’s poetry, and his cultural legacy, Cavafy’s house at 10 Rue Lepsius (now Sharm elSheykli) has been restored to what it looked like when the poet lived there and has been turned into a museum and library in his memory.
Returning to Egypt and the English Department of the American University in Cairo, O’Grady completed his translation of a selection of Cavafy’s poems, and Alternative Manners, his version of 33 Cavafy poems, was published in 1993 by the Hellenic Society, Athens Alexandria. Unfortunately, much to his regret, the proofs were never properly corrected. And so the book was never put on the market commercially and has never been reviewed in newspapers.
Readers, forgive
He feels Alternative Manners “reads like Greek ruins” and asks readers now to “please forgive, and overlook, and correct.” But, he concedes modestly, the collection has its admirers. “Greek people who know their Cavafy and who have read it found my Hiberno English very suited to Cavafy’s Alexandrian Greek, and closer to the text of Cavafy’s language than standard British and American translations.”
A reading of two of Cavafy’s best known poems illustrates the particular insights and turn of phrase which an Irish translator can bring to his work.
His translation of Ithaka loses the references by Friar and Keeley and Sherrard to Laistrygonians and Cyclops; instead, they become “cannibal bogeymen met in half light” and “those with one eye, open for their main chance.” The “Phoenician trading stations” or “market places” of the other translators become “ports you’ve not dreamed of” and “every city”.
In Waiting for the Barbarians, Sherrard and Keeley have the city fathers “assembled in the forum” and Friar has them mustered in the forum but O’Grady has them “waiting, here in the square.” Instead of the barbarians being dazzled, they are not impressed by “bamboozle”. And, instead of rhetoric and public speaking or “eloquence and public speeches”, O’Grady speaks of boring baloney.
Secretary to Pound
For some years, Desmond O’Grady was secretary to the American poet Ezra Pound in his exile in Italy. Now he lives in Kinsale, but regards Greece as his second home. His work as a poet has, of course, been recognised at home, where he is a member of Aosdana, and where he has been back for the opening of “Waves of the Sea”, the new writers’ and translators’ centre.
His earlier frustration with the printers handling of Alternative Manners could be rectified if an Irish publisher found an interest in the book. But in the meantime, he can take comfort from the theme in Cavafy’s Ithaka: the journey, not the destination, is what constitutes our true reward.
This ‘Irishman’s Diary’ was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 20 July 1996
06 July 1996
Dropping Ankara in Rhodes
By Patrick Comerford
Early summer is the time to go island hopping in the Aegean. The harbours of Greek islands such as Rhodes, Kos and Kalimnos are lined with small ferries, fishing boats and caiques offering day trips to neighbouring islands in the Dodecanese, and to Greece's nearest neighbour, Turkey.
From Agathonissi in the north to Kastellorizo in the far south east, the Dodecanese is a chain of over 1,000 islands, islets and rocky outcrops at the end of the eastern Mediterranean, strung out like a necklace along the west and south-west coast of Asia Minor.
These are islands dripping with history and oozing with culture: Kos, where Hippocrates formulated the foundations of modern medicine; Patmos, where St John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation; Kalimnos, Leros and Simi, with their neo-classical mansions; and Rhodes, where the giant Colossus once straddled the harbour of Mandhraki, holding aloft the flame of freedom that inspired the Statue of Liberty.
The casual freedom of land and sea, to hop from one island to the next, is part of the lure of a holiday in the sun in this part of Greece. But it’s a freedom that comes with a price, and a freedom valued by the local Greeks. At the crossroads of three continents, this island chain was once ruled by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy; it has been occupied by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Knights of St John, the Turks, the Italians and Nazi Germany. Only with the end of the second World War was it finally handed over by Britain and incorporated into the Greek state in 1947.
Today, only 26 of the Dodecanese islands are inhabited: the largest, Rhodes, has about 100,000 people, but most have only a few hundred residents or less, and there are only 79 people left on Pserimos.
The large Turkish minorities in Rhodes and Kos and the mosques and minarets still dotting the skylines of many islands are ever present reminders that Turkey occupied the Dodecanese for almost 400 years, from 1522 to 1912. Turkey is Greece’s nearest neighbour, and from many islands you can feel it’s almost possible to touch the Turkish coast with its harbours and towns, houses and hotels.
The fishermen and ferry operators supplement their income during these months with day trips from Rhodes to Marmaris, from Simi to Data, and from Kos to Bodrum, site of the ancient world’s Hallicarnassus and its Mausoleum.
On Saturdays and Sundays, the NV Nissos offers day trips to Turkey, leaving Kos at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m. But as a small group of not more than two dozen journalists boarded the Nissos in Kos Harbour, close to the Plane Tree of Hippocrates and the Mosque of Hatzi Hassan, we were reminded of the ever-present fear of an invasion from Anatolia, five kilometres across the stretch of water: local people talk in terms of “when the Turks come”, not “if”.
With blue skies and blue seas, it could have been an idyllic summer trip. Apart from goat herds and environmentalists, few people ever bother to visit the more remote rocks off the coast of Kos, Kalimnos, Kalolimnos and Pserimos. The crew took down the sign reading “Turkey” as we sailed off for the islets of Imia or Limnia, two flat pancakes less than two miles from Kalolimnos, almost 2½ miles from the Turkish island of Cavus, and over three miles from the western-most Turkish coast on the peninsula of Bodrum.
The Greek naval frigate HS Limnos, which had taken part in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was fresh back from the Adriatic and had offered to take us out to look at the rocks. But before we left, Turkey protested and summoned the Greek ambassador in Ankara, Dimitrios Nezeritis, to warn against the media trip.
It was no idle warning – two days earlier, a Greek coastguard vessel and a Turkish patrol boat had collided in Greek waters, a mile south of Imia.
For more than 60 years, Turkey had accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged by Ankara until last December.
But as Turkey faced a major political crisis with the unexpected electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara claimed for the first time that Imia was part of the Turkish province of Mugla. Tension began to escalate and on January 27th Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the largest of the two Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.
Four days later, Turkish troops landed on the smaller rocky outcrop. The two countries were on the brink of war when President Clinton intervened and the Turkish troops withdrew.
The crisis was a temporary boost at home to Turkey’s Tansu Ciller as she searched (in vain) for a coalition partner to keep her in power. But it threatened to bring down the new Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis; his Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos; and the Pasok government in Athens. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces from the area around Imia and return to the status quo ante, although Ms Ciller continued to press Turkey’s claims to 3,000 Aegean islands – the sum total of all islands in Greek waters.
As we sailed out of Kos, the military tension was palpable and visible. Greek and Turkish jets buzzed overhead sporadically, a Greek coastguard vessel and a navy ship were within sight and, in the distance, we could catch a glimpse of a ship with Turkish naval markings.
Costas Bikas, the Foreign Ministry spokesman from Athens on board the Nissos, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about the cruise and it was none of Ankara’s business. But the Turks made it their business. As the Greek and Turkish jet fighters swooped low over the area, the Turkish foreign ministry took a group of foreign and local journalists out from Bodrum. Once again, there were new Turkish claims to the islets known to the Turks as Kardak – by Defence Minister Oltan Sunguklu and by naval spokesman Ali Kurunahmut, who told cruising journalists: “Kardak is a Turkish islet and we are in Turkish waters.”
Trailing both groups were reporters and camera crews from the Greek and Turkish press and television. The crisis had moved from territorial claims and counter claims to cruise and counter cruise for journalists in the Aegean. As Imia faded out of sight, we followed past Psenmos, Kalolimnos, Leros and Kalimnos, through the straits separating Kalimnos and Telendhos, into Pothia, the port harbour of Kalimnos – names that once tripped off the tongues of backpackers in the 1970s.
As we disembarked at the dockside in Pothia, the microphones and cameras crowded into our faces: the foreign media had become the message.
The rocky island of Kalimnos is famous for its traditional sponge fishing; its fame in the past rested on Homer’s reference in the Iliad to the ships from the “Kalyndian Islands” taking part in the Trojan wars. Today, war remains an ever-present threat to the peace of the islanders and their sponge fishers.
The Nissos returned to Kos to prepare for Sunday’s day trippers to Bodrum, and a launch from the Hellenic coastguard took us out from the harbour to the navy frigate Timnos, with its crew waiting to take us on to Rhodes. For four hours we watched the crew tracking Turkish moves in the Aegean sea and skies, before our odyssey came to an end and Rhodes came into sight with its medieval castles and palaces, mosques and minarets and three harbours.
Two deer stand at each end of Mandhrki where the Colossus once straddled the entrance to the harbour, with ships passing through its towering legs. A small tug, the Herakles, took us ashore, reminding us of the apt inscription that once graced Colossus, praising the lovely gift of unlettered freedom. “For to those who spring from the race of Herakles, dominion is a heritage both on land and sea.”
This feature was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Saturday 6 July 1996
Early summer is the time to go island hopping in the Aegean. The harbours of Greek islands such as Rhodes, Kos and Kalimnos are lined with small ferries, fishing boats and caiques offering day trips to neighbouring islands in the Dodecanese, and to Greece's nearest neighbour, Turkey.
From Agathonissi in the north to Kastellorizo in the far south east, the Dodecanese is a chain of over 1,000 islands, islets and rocky outcrops at the end of the eastern Mediterranean, strung out like a necklace along the west and south-west coast of Asia Minor.
These are islands dripping with history and oozing with culture: Kos, where Hippocrates formulated the foundations of modern medicine; Patmos, where St John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation; Kalimnos, Leros and Simi, with their neo-classical mansions; and Rhodes, where the giant Colossus once straddled the harbour of Mandhraki, holding aloft the flame of freedom that inspired the Statue of Liberty.
The casual freedom of land and sea, to hop from one island to the next, is part of the lure of a holiday in the sun in this part of Greece. But it’s a freedom that comes with a price, and a freedom valued by the local Greeks. At the crossroads of three continents, this island chain was once ruled by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy; it has been occupied by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Knights of St John, the Turks, the Italians and Nazi Germany. Only with the end of the second World War was it finally handed over by Britain and incorporated into the Greek state in 1947.
Today, only 26 of the Dodecanese islands are inhabited: the largest, Rhodes, has about 100,000 people, but most have only a few hundred residents or less, and there are only 79 people left on Pserimos.
The large Turkish minorities in Rhodes and Kos and the mosques and minarets still dotting the skylines of many islands are ever present reminders that Turkey occupied the Dodecanese for almost 400 years, from 1522 to 1912. Turkey is Greece’s nearest neighbour, and from many islands you can feel it’s almost possible to touch the Turkish coast with its harbours and towns, houses and hotels.
The fishermen and ferry operators supplement their income during these months with day trips from Rhodes to Marmaris, from Simi to Data, and from Kos to Bodrum, site of the ancient world’s Hallicarnassus and its Mausoleum.
On Saturdays and Sundays, the NV Nissos offers day trips to Turkey, leaving Kos at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m. But as a small group of not more than two dozen journalists boarded the Nissos in Kos Harbour, close to the Plane Tree of Hippocrates and the Mosque of Hatzi Hassan, we were reminded of the ever-present fear of an invasion from Anatolia, five kilometres across the stretch of water: local people talk in terms of “when the Turks come”, not “if”.
With blue skies and blue seas, it could have been an idyllic summer trip. Apart from goat herds and environmentalists, few people ever bother to visit the more remote rocks off the coast of Kos, Kalimnos, Kalolimnos and Pserimos. The crew took down the sign reading “Turkey” as we sailed off for the islets of Imia or Limnia, two flat pancakes less than two miles from Kalolimnos, almost 2½ miles from the Turkish island of Cavus, and over three miles from the western-most Turkish coast on the peninsula of Bodrum.
The Greek naval frigate HS Limnos, which had taken part in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was fresh back from the Adriatic and had offered to take us out to look at the rocks. But before we left, Turkey protested and summoned the Greek ambassador in Ankara, Dimitrios Nezeritis, to warn against the media trip.
It was no idle warning – two days earlier, a Greek coastguard vessel and a Turkish patrol boat had collided in Greek waters, a mile south of Imia.
For more than 60 years, Turkey had accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged by Ankara until last December.
But as Turkey faced a major political crisis with the unexpected electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara claimed for the first time that Imia was part of the Turkish province of Mugla. Tension began to escalate and on January 27th Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the largest of the two Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.
Four days later, Turkish troops landed on the smaller rocky outcrop. The two countries were on the brink of war when President Clinton intervened and the Turkish troops withdrew.
The crisis was a temporary boost at home to Turkey’s Tansu Ciller as she searched (in vain) for a coalition partner to keep her in power. But it threatened to bring down the new Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis; his Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos; and the Pasok government in Athens. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces from the area around Imia and return to the status quo ante, although Ms Ciller continued to press Turkey’s claims to 3,000 Aegean islands – the sum total of all islands in Greek waters.
As we sailed out of Kos, the military tension was palpable and visible. Greek and Turkish jets buzzed overhead sporadically, a Greek coastguard vessel and a navy ship were within sight and, in the distance, we could catch a glimpse of a ship with Turkish naval markings.
Costas Bikas, the Foreign Ministry spokesman from Athens on board the Nissos, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about the cruise and it was none of Ankara’s business. But the Turks made it their business. As the Greek and Turkish jet fighters swooped low over the area, the Turkish foreign ministry took a group of foreign and local journalists out from Bodrum. Once again, there were new Turkish claims to the islets known to the Turks as Kardak – by Defence Minister Oltan Sunguklu and by naval spokesman Ali Kurunahmut, who told cruising journalists: “Kardak is a Turkish islet and we are in Turkish waters.”
Trailing both groups were reporters and camera crews from the Greek and Turkish press and television. The crisis had moved from territorial claims and counter claims to cruise and counter cruise for journalists in the Aegean. As Imia faded out of sight, we followed past Psenmos, Kalolimnos, Leros and Kalimnos, through the straits separating Kalimnos and Telendhos, into Pothia, the port harbour of Kalimnos – names that once tripped off the tongues of backpackers in the 1970s.
As we disembarked at the dockside in Pothia, the microphones and cameras crowded into our faces: the foreign media had become the message.
The rocky island of Kalimnos is famous for its traditional sponge fishing; its fame in the past rested on Homer’s reference in the Iliad to the ships from the “Kalyndian Islands” taking part in the Trojan wars. Today, war remains an ever-present threat to the peace of the islanders and their sponge fishers.
The Nissos returned to Kos to prepare for Sunday’s day trippers to Bodrum, and a launch from the Hellenic coastguard took us out from the harbour to the navy frigate Timnos, with its crew waiting to take us on to Rhodes. For four hours we watched the crew tracking Turkish moves in the Aegean sea and skies, before our odyssey came to an end and Rhodes came into sight with its medieval castles and palaces, mosques and minarets and three harbours.
Two deer stand at each end of Mandhrki where the Colossus once straddled the entrance to the harbour, with ships passing through its towering legs. A small tug, the Herakles, took us ashore, reminding us of the apt inscription that once graced Colossus, praising the lovely gift of unlettered freedom. “For to those who spring from the race of Herakles, dominion is a heritage both on land and sea.”
This feature was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Saturday 6 July 1996
24 June 1996
Strongman of the left
who returned from
exile to recast
Greek democracy
Greece’s most colourful politician since the second World War, Andreas George Papandreou, was born on the Greek island of Chios
By Patrick Comerford
Greece’s most colourful politician since the second World War, Andreas George Papandreou, was born on the Greek island of Chios – the birthplace of Homer – on February 5th, 1919. His father, George Papandreou, became prime minister in the 1960s.
As a law student at Athens University, the young Andreas Papandreou became involved in radical, left wing politics, and was jailed and tortured under the pre war Metaxas dictatorship. He left for the US in 1940, and completed a PhD at Harvard before joining the US navy and becoming a US citizen. After the war, he taught economics at Harvard, became a professor at Minnesota and later at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the US, he came under the influence of John Kenneth Galbraith and was closely associated with Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party, and there he met and married Margaret Chant. Their four children include the present Education Minister, George Papandreou.
After almost 20 years in exile he returned to Greece on a Fulbright scholarship in 1959 and in 1961 became director of the newly founded Centre for Economic Research and an adviser to the Bank of Greece.
He was first elected as a deputy for his father's Centre Union in February, 1964, and was appointed Minister to the Prime Minister. But he was soon accused of plotting a coup with left wing army officers. The allegations coincided with the withdrawal of the future conservative prime minister, Constantine Mitsotakis, and others from Centre Union – Papandreou later described Mitsotakis as ‘my own arch enemy, the tall, ruthless Cretan who had sown the seeds of our destruction.’
The crisis brought the colonels to power in 1967, and Papandreou was jailed from April to December 1967. Mitsotakis was released after promising to quit politics for life, but Papandreou was detained and tortured until influential Democrats persuaded Lyndon Johnson to intervene. Johnson told a White House reception: ‘I just told those Greek bastards to lay off that commie son of a bitch, whatever his name is.’
He went into exile in Sweden, where he briefly held a professor ship at Stockholm University before moving to Canada, and for five years he was Professor of Economics at York University. In exile he founded the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), later the nucleus for his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
With the fall of the colonels he returned to Greece in 1974 and founded Pasok. In the first election, the new party garnered only 12 per cent of the vote and 12 seats, but Papandreou set to work on building a web of party activists in every town, village and island. In 1977, Pasok doubled its vote, and Papandreou became official leader of the opposition. In 1981, campaigning on the slogan Allaghi (Change), it was swept to power. Papandreou became the country's first socialist prime minister, breaking the right's post war grip on power and becoming an enduring hero to the left. Four years later, Papandreou and Pasok comfortably won a second term.
Between 1981 and 1989, he embraced Third World radicals such as Libya's Col Gadafy, antagonised the US and castigated his EU partners. His radical domestic reforms included civil marriage, a lower voting age, greater rights for women and the abolition of the death penalty. And yet he was strongly nationalist at all times, taking tough stands on Macedonia, Cyprus, and Turkish claims in the Aegean, and demanding the removal of US military bases. However, the government was marred by allegations of scandals corruption, and financial embezzlements, revelations about his private life, and his ill health. Papandreou was absent for two months in 1988 when he went to London for triple bypass open heart surgery performed by Sir Magdi Yacoub. In London as he fought for his life, an Olympic Airways hostess half his age, Dimitri Liani, kept vigil by his hospital bedside.
The pair shocked the nation when they publicly flaunted their affair. Shortly after his election defeat at the hands of Constantine Mitsotakis and his New Democracy in June 1989, Mr Papandreou divorced Margaret, his American wife of 38 years, and married Ms Liani, by then popularly known as Mimi and deeply unpopular within the ranks of Pasok and throughout Greece.
But even in his worst days in opposition, during three election defeats in 1989 and 1990, he could still pull 40 per cent of the popular vote. In 1992 he was cleared of charges relating to a $200 million bank embezzlement and at the same time, Ms Liani (temporarily) gave up her flashy clothes and carefree ways. But it seemed a career that began with promise and privilege had come to an end.
And yet he defied all the pundits when returned to power in 1993 with a landslide victory over his old rival Mitsotakis - the two had been lampooned in the Greek press as battling septuagenarian dinosaurs. But he was frail and unable to put in a full day's work. He antagonised many long-time supporters and soon found himself under fire from dissenters within Pasok when he appointed his wife as chief of staff, his son as junior foreign minister, his wife's cousin as junior culture minister and his personal physician, Dimitris Kremastinos, as health minister.
The Greek presidency of the EU at the beginning of 1994 should have been a personal triumph, but late that year the charismatic former European Affairs Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, resigned from the cabinet, and within weeks Pasok fared badly in local elections. However, the greatest personal setback may have been the death of the former culture minister, Ms Melina Mercouri.
By now he seldom chaired cabinet meetings, and was hardly ever seen in parliament. All access to the prime minister, even for cabinet ministers was controlled by Mimi and trusted members of her entourage, including her mother, her brother, an Orthodox priest, and her personal astrologer.
The astrologer predicted that the last 10 days of November would be crucial for Mr Papandreou's health, and at the end of November he was rushed to the top Athens Onassis Heart Centre; with pneumonia. For weeks he was kept alive on a respirator and a dialysis machine, and hundreds of supporters camped outside the hospital for days. He survived Christmas and into the New Year, but their best wishes were to no avail.
He resigned on January 15th and was replaced as prime minister by Mr Costas Simitis, although he retained the title of party president. Eventually he left hospital after four months, only four days before Greece's national day.
As he left, he told boisterous supporters: ‘With love, I'm leaving from this.’ He was escorted by Ms Liani, who smiled and said he was unable to say more. He waved feebly from the back seat, where he sat expressionless as he was driven away.
Ms Liani, who has accused her husband's children and ex-wife of orchestrating attacks against her, is expected to be exiled at the luxury pink villa she built for herself in the posh Athens suburb of Ekali at astronomical cost.
History may not judge Mr Papandreou on his last term in office. Certainly, he has transformed Greek politics radically and to the core.
Pasok, with 170 of the 300 seats in parliament, has a secure majority that will ensure it survives until, next year, when Mr Papandreou’s term was due to end. But Mr Papandreou leaves deep divisions within Pasok, and Mr Simitis has an uphill battle to take control of the party leadership over the next few weeks. The party faithful only hope that he can get party affairs back into shape in time to win the next election.
This obituary was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 24 June 1996
By Patrick Comerford
Greece’s most colourful politician since the second World War, Andreas George Papandreou, was born on the Greek island of Chios – the birthplace of Homer – on February 5th, 1919. His father, George Papandreou, became prime minister in the 1960s.
As a law student at Athens University, the young Andreas Papandreou became involved in radical, left wing politics, and was jailed and tortured under the pre war Metaxas dictatorship. He left for the US in 1940, and completed a PhD at Harvard before joining the US navy and becoming a US citizen. After the war, he taught economics at Harvard, became a professor at Minnesota and later at the University of California, Berkeley.
In the US, he came under the influence of John Kenneth Galbraith and was closely associated with Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and the Democratic Party, and there he met and married Margaret Chant. Their four children include the present Education Minister, George Papandreou.
After almost 20 years in exile he returned to Greece on a Fulbright scholarship in 1959 and in 1961 became director of the newly founded Centre for Economic Research and an adviser to the Bank of Greece.
He was first elected as a deputy for his father's Centre Union in February, 1964, and was appointed Minister to the Prime Minister. But he was soon accused of plotting a coup with left wing army officers. The allegations coincided with the withdrawal of the future conservative prime minister, Constantine Mitsotakis, and others from Centre Union – Papandreou later described Mitsotakis as ‘my own arch enemy, the tall, ruthless Cretan who had sown the seeds of our destruction.’
The crisis brought the colonels to power in 1967, and Papandreou was jailed from April to December 1967. Mitsotakis was released after promising to quit politics for life, but Papandreou was detained and tortured until influential Democrats persuaded Lyndon Johnson to intervene. Johnson told a White House reception: ‘I just told those Greek bastards to lay off that commie son of a bitch, whatever his name is.’
He went into exile in Sweden, where he briefly held a professor ship at Stockholm University before moving to Canada, and for five years he was Professor of Economics at York University. In exile he founded the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), later the nucleus for his Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok).
With the fall of the colonels he returned to Greece in 1974 and founded Pasok. In the first election, the new party garnered only 12 per cent of the vote and 12 seats, but Papandreou set to work on building a web of party activists in every town, village and island. In 1977, Pasok doubled its vote, and Papandreou became official leader of the opposition. In 1981, campaigning on the slogan Allaghi (Change), it was swept to power. Papandreou became the country's first socialist prime minister, breaking the right's post war grip on power and becoming an enduring hero to the left. Four years later, Papandreou and Pasok comfortably won a second term.
Between 1981 and 1989, he embraced Third World radicals such as Libya's Col Gadafy, antagonised the US and castigated his EU partners. His radical domestic reforms included civil marriage, a lower voting age, greater rights for women and the abolition of the death penalty. And yet he was strongly nationalist at all times, taking tough stands on Macedonia, Cyprus, and Turkish claims in the Aegean, and demanding the removal of US military bases. However, the government was marred by allegations of scandals corruption, and financial embezzlements, revelations about his private life, and his ill health. Papandreou was absent for two months in 1988 when he went to London for triple bypass open heart surgery performed by Sir Magdi Yacoub. In London as he fought for his life, an Olympic Airways hostess half his age, Dimitri Liani, kept vigil by his hospital bedside.
The pair shocked the nation when they publicly flaunted their affair. Shortly after his election defeat at the hands of Constantine Mitsotakis and his New Democracy in June 1989, Mr Papandreou divorced Margaret, his American wife of 38 years, and married Ms Liani, by then popularly known as Mimi and deeply unpopular within the ranks of Pasok and throughout Greece.
But even in his worst days in opposition, during three election defeats in 1989 and 1990, he could still pull 40 per cent of the popular vote. In 1992 he was cleared of charges relating to a $200 million bank embezzlement and at the same time, Ms Liani (temporarily) gave up her flashy clothes and carefree ways. But it seemed a career that began with promise and privilege had come to an end.
And yet he defied all the pundits when returned to power in 1993 with a landslide victory over his old rival Mitsotakis - the two had been lampooned in the Greek press as battling septuagenarian dinosaurs. But he was frail and unable to put in a full day's work. He antagonised many long-time supporters and soon found himself under fire from dissenters within Pasok when he appointed his wife as chief of staff, his son as junior foreign minister, his wife's cousin as junior culture minister and his personal physician, Dimitris Kremastinos, as health minister.
The Greek presidency of the EU at the beginning of 1994 should have been a personal triumph, but late that year the charismatic former European Affairs Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, resigned from the cabinet, and within weeks Pasok fared badly in local elections. However, the greatest personal setback may have been the death of the former culture minister, Ms Melina Mercouri.
By now he seldom chaired cabinet meetings, and was hardly ever seen in parliament. All access to the prime minister, even for cabinet ministers was controlled by Mimi and trusted members of her entourage, including her mother, her brother, an Orthodox priest, and her personal astrologer.
The astrologer predicted that the last 10 days of November would be crucial for Mr Papandreou's health, and at the end of November he was rushed to the top Athens Onassis Heart Centre; with pneumonia. For weeks he was kept alive on a respirator and a dialysis machine, and hundreds of supporters camped outside the hospital for days. He survived Christmas and into the New Year, but their best wishes were to no avail.
He resigned on January 15th and was replaced as prime minister by Mr Costas Simitis, although he retained the title of party president. Eventually he left hospital after four months, only four days before Greece's national day.
As he left, he told boisterous supporters: ‘With love, I'm leaving from this.’ He was escorted by Ms Liani, who smiled and said he was unable to say more. He waved feebly from the back seat, where he sat expressionless as he was driven away.
Ms Liani, who has accused her husband's children and ex-wife of orchestrating attacks against her, is expected to be exiled at the luxury pink villa she built for herself in the posh Athens suburb of Ekali at astronomical cost.
History may not judge Mr Papandreou on his last term in office. Certainly, he has transformed Greek politics radically and to the core.
Pasok, with 170 of the 300 seats in parliament, has a secure majority that will ensure it survives until, next year, when Mr Papandreou’s term was due to end. But Mr Papandreou leaves deep divisions within Pasok, and Mr Simitis has an uphill battle to take control of the party leadership over the next few weeks. The party faithful only hope that he can get party affairs back into shape in time to win the next election.
This obituary was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 24 June 1996
13 April 1996
An Israeli warrior for peace
Yitzak Rabin: Soldier of Peace, The Jerusalem Report Staff, ed David Horovitz
Patrick Comerford
On the morning of Saturday, November 4th last, the Torah or scripture reading in synagogues was the portion preceding the episode in which God orders his servant Abraham to prove his faith by sacrificing his beloved son Isaac (in Hebrew, Yitzhak), the father of Jacob, who grows up to become Israel.
In a small Yemenite synagogue near Tel Aviv, those listening intently included a young man who believed he too had a command from God to kill another Isaac Yitzhak Rabin.
This book gives a chilling account of the rise of the ultra-right in Israel and the climate that bred an assassin like Yigael Amir. According to one of the contributors, Rabin was “a lion slaughtered like a sheep”, because he refused to take his marching orders from “those who worship land more than they worship life”. He bitterly castigated the Likud opposition leader Bibi Netanyahu, for failing to take a stand against right wing extremism, but continued to insist: “I don’t believe a Jew will kill a Jew.”
How wrong he was.
Yitzhak Rabin was the very antithesis of the right-wing Israeli settlers on the West Bank who combine political and religious zealotry without care or consideration for the views and beliefs of their neighbours. He was a Zionist and idealist from a previous generation, the son of refugees from the former Russian empire who had been imbued with socialism and secular values. His early life is also the story of those early socialist and secular Zionists, the Palmah and the Haganah, fighters like Yigael Allon and Moshe Dayan, and the early conflicts of a left wing activist with David Ben Gurion.
At the height of the Israeli political crisis in 1974 that brought about Golda Meir's resignation, Rabin half joked: “All my life I have been collecting ex’s. I am ex-Chief of Staff, ex-ambassador to the United States, and now an ex-potential Defence Minister.”
And he soon became the ex-Prime Minister when he was forced to resign over his wife’s American bank account in 1977. But while defeated in political battle, he had not yet lost the political war. He returned to government in 1984, and immediately presented proposals for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Rabin underestimated his achievements. Although Dayan stole most of the credit, it was Rabin who drew up the battle plans for the Six Day War, who took the Sinai, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and who trebled the territory controlled by Israel. He democratised his own party. With his election victory in 1992 he won the support of his political colleagues and most Israelis for his plans for peace with the Palestinians in 1993 he shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, agreeing to autonomy for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And he worked until the end in the hope of reaching peace with Syria.
He was a soldier who despised war. As far back as 1967 he was ready to trade the newly conquered territory for peace. And when the Hebrew University of Jerusalem honoured him with a doctorate in 1967, he spoke with pathos of the enemy’s anguish and the terrible price of victory: “War is intrinsically harsh and cruel, bloody and tear stained.”
This book profiles Rabin in all his strengths, and in all his weaknesses too. He was the calm, calculated, proud voice of Israel, “a son of Israel and the father of its future”. But he was also harsh to the point of contemptuous rudeness, he held politicians and politics in disdain, he was painfully inept at small talk, an ambassador who was uncertain on the party circuit and the dance floor.
He could make bad political decisions in anger and in fury, such as the alleged order to troops in 1988 to break the bones of Palestinians in an effort to crush the intifada, or the expulsion of over 490 activists to the cold mountains of Lebanon in December 1992. He was cautious, pedantic and analytical, and only with great difficulty did he find the strength on his last night at a rally in Tel Aviv to join in singing a popular peace song:
So sing only a song for peace,
Do not whisper a prayer,
Better sing a song for peace
With a great shout.
But as Yigael Amir has shown, Israel does not need men with manners who regard themselves as saints. It has too many of them. It needs politicians and statesmen with the wisdom of a man like Rabin.
Had Rabin survived there is little doubt he would have led his Labour Party to victory in the current election campaign. His opponents in Likud still have to answer for their part in right wing rallies and protests that heard calls for Rabin’s death, at which Rabin was branded a traitor, and at which placards and posters regularly portrayed him in a Nazi uniform or with his features overlaid with the cross hairs of a rifle sight. Outside the Rabin apartment, demonstrators shouted at his wife Leah: “Next year we will string you up.”
Rabin had few friends. Ezer Weizman begrudged him his successes and achievements ever after the Six Day War, and made a dark promise to do everything to end his political career. The bitter personal enmity Rabin shared with Shimon Peres, lasting for three decades or more, was resolved only in the past few years. But his friends included one of the contributors to this book, Hirch Goodman of the Jerusalem Report, who knew Rabin for 28 years, having been assigned to him as a bodyguard during the Six Day War. In his prologue, Goodman admits Rabin “became my instant hero. He was Israel, that new generation of Jew, all that I aspired to be.”
Too many books suffer from being the collective work of too many writers. But this book is enriched by the experiences of its contributors, Israel’s leading journalists who have followed the career of a true “Soldier for Peace.” David Horovitz has done his colleagues on the Jerusalem Report – and the memory of Yitzhak Rabin – a service in the way this book has been edited.
This book review was first published in ‘The Irish Times’ on Saturday 13 April 1996.
24 January 1996
Theodoros Pangalos
Theodoros Pangalos
By Patrick Comerford
Born 1938, the grandson of a famous Greek general educated at Athens University and the Sorbonne, Ph.D.
In the news because: One of the most striking changes in the Greek cabinet by Costas Simitis is the appointment of Pangalos to replace Karolos Papoulias as Foreign Minister.
Early activism: Founder member of the Grigoris Lambrakis Youth Movement, candidate for the left-wing EDA party in 1964, active in opposition to the colonels' regime, deprived of Greek citizenship 1968.
In exile: Lecturer and researcher in economic development and town planning at the Sorbonne.
Later career: Head of Economic Development Institute, 1969, 1978 law practice in Athens and legal adviser to trade unions active in environmental issues, author of several works on economics, sociology and philosophy.
Qualifications for the job: Fluent in French, English and German, one of Greece's best versed diplomats on EU affairs, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1987 1988 and 1993 Minister of State for European Affairs, 1987 1988. Praised for hard work on expanding the EU to 15 members from 12 during the Greek presidency in 1994.
What’s he like? “Pangalos is outspoken but he’s also engaging, articulate and a good negotiator. When it comes to the EU, he knows his stuff,” one EU diplomat said. Others say he is a pragmatic, flexible negotiator, not rooted in Greek parochialism.
Opponents: Diplomatic sources say some EU states indicated they preferred someone else.
Why? Pangalos insulted both Germany and Italy when he was European Affairs Minister during the Greek presidency. He described Germany as “a giant with bestial force and a child’s brain”. He later apologised publicly, but ended Greece’s presidency by dodging a handshake with the then Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
He criticised EU partners for allowing Turkey to “drag its bloodied boots on European carpets”. He supports Cyprus joining the EU and expects to be involved directly in a US initiative on the Cypriot question.
Any critics at home? He was critical of Andreas Papandreou’s ability to govern and has enjoyed little support within the party. The right-wing opposition and press have attacked Simitis for appointing both Pangalos and the former European Commissioner, Vasso Papandreou, to his cabinet.
But? The pro-government Eleftherotypia said Simitis had shown himself “more daring” than he first appeared, and Pangalos would add new weight to Greek foreign policy, “a major test” for the government.
Last word to Thanos Veremis of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy: “He may surprise you. He is a realistic negotiator, and he’s willing to take responsibility for his decisions. He has a big mouth but everyone is hoping Simitis will be able to tranquillise him.”
This news feature was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 24 January 1996
By Patrick Comerford
Born 1938, the grandson of a famous Greek general educated at Athens University and the Sorbonne, Ph.D.
In the news because: One of the most striking changes in the Greek cabinet by Costas Simitis is the appointment of Pangalos to replace Karolos Papoulias as Foreign Minister.
Early activism: Founder member of the Grigoris Lambrakis Youth Movement, candidate for the left-wing EDA party in 1964, active in opposition to the colonels' regime, deprived of Greek citizenship 1968.
In exile: Lecturer and researcher in economic development and town planning at the Sorbonne.
Later career: Head of Economic Development Institute, 1969, 1978 law practice in Athens and legal adviser to trade unions active in environmental issues, author of several works on economics, sociology and philosophy.
Qualifications for the job: Fluent in French, English and German, one of Greece's best versed diplomats on EU affairs, Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1987 1988 and 1993 Minister of State for European Affairs, 1987 1988. Praised for hard work on expanding the EU to 15 members from 12 during the Greek presidency in 1994.
What’s he like? “Pangalos is outspoken but he’s also engaging, articulate and a good negotiator. When it comes to the EU, he knows his stuff,” one EU diplomat said. Others say he is a pragmatic, flexible negotiator, not rooted in Greek parochialism.
Opponents: Diplomatic sources say some EU states indicated they preferred someone else.
Why? Pangalos insulted both Germany and Italy when he was European Affairs Minister during the Greek presidency. He described Germany as “a giant with bestial force and a child’s brain”. He later apologised publicly, but ended Greece’s presidency by dodging a handshake with the then Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
He criticised EU partners for allowing Turkey to “drag its bloodied boots on European carpets”. He supports Cyprus joining the EU and expects to be involved directly in a US initiative on the Cypriot question.
Any critics at home? He was critical of Andreas Papandreou’s ability to govern and has enjoyed little support within the party. The right-wing opposition and press have attacked Simitis for appointing both Pangalos and the former European Commissioner, Vasso Papandreou, to his cabinet.
But? The pro-government Eleftherotypia said Simitis had shown himself “more daring” than he first appeared, and Pangalos would add new weight to Greek foreign policy, “a major test” for the government.
Last word to Thanos Veremis of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy: “He may surprise you. He is a realistic negotiator, and he’s willing to take responsibility for his decisions. He has a big mouth but everyone is hoping Simitis will be able to tranquillise him.”
This news feature was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 24 January 1996
19 January 1996
Reformer Simitis chosen to replace Papandreou
By Patrick Comerford
Greece's ruling Pasok party yesterday chose Mr Costas Simitis (59) as its new leader following the resignation as prime minister of Mr Andreas Papandreou, who remains in hospital under intensive care.
Mr Simitis was chosen in a run-off involving 167 deputies from the party. He won with 86 votes, against 75 for pro-Papandreou candidate and interim prime minister, Mr Akis Tsohatzopoulos (56).
The latter had been expected to carry the election with the help of deputies who had voted in the first round for the two other candidates, the Defence Minister, Mr Gerassimos Arsenis – another Papandreou supporter, who garnered 50 votes – and a former deputy prime minister, Mr Yannis Haralambopoulos, who won 11.
Mr Simitis was a founding member with Mr Papandreou of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok). He emerged as a challenger to his ailing mentor last year and in opinion polls over the past two months was the favourite to win the succession race. His toughest rival was thought to be Mr Arsenis (64).
In recent weeks those close to Mr Papandreou’s wife, Ms Dimitra Liani, were said to have approached Mr Simitis offering support in return for assurances for her future.
Although yesterday’s vote makes him the new leader of the parliamentary party, he is in effect prime minister. He will receive his mandate from President Costis Stephanopoulos before facing a confidence vote in parliament. With a large absolute majority in the 300 seat parliament, Pasok should be able to serve out its four year term, which ends in October 1997.
Mr Simitis is considered the leader of Pasok’s reform and pro-EU wing. He has often criticised Mr Papandreou for dragging Athens away from Brussels politically, and in recent months was to the fore in demanding Mr Papandreou’s resignation. He led the “Gang of Four” who rose to challenge Mr Papandreou’s leadership after he won a third term in October 1993. The other members of the gang were the former European Affairs Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, the former European Commissioner for Social Affairs, Dr Vasso Papandreou (no relation to the former prime minister) and Mr Paraskevas Avgerinos.
The Simitis-led government is likely to break with the past and move away from the populist politics of Mr Papandreou. The new prime minister also faces the challenge of ensuring Pasok survives the post Papandreou era and of rebuilding the party in time for next year’s elections. He is expected to oversee a major shake-up of the present administration.
Mr Simitis previously served as Agriculture. National Economy, Education and Industry Minister and has been a member of every Pasok cabinet since 1981, when Mr Papandreou first swept to power.
He is a Supreme Court lawyer with his own practice. He studied law and economics in Marburg and at the London School at Economics, and taught commercial law in Athens. In 1967, when the military junta took power, he escaped abroad and rallied against the colonels with Mr Papandreou until returning to Greece after the fall of the dictators in 1974. He was first elected to parliament in 1985, and was respected for the austerity programme he introduced in 1985-1987.
Mr Simitis was named Industry Minister in 1993 but resigned in anger when Mr Papandreou blamed him publicly for bungling a privatisation plan for a state shipyard. The row and his resignation made him the natural leader of the party reformers.
He is married and has two daughters.
Mr Papandreou’s resignation this week ended nearly two months of political paralysis and confusion in Greece since the 76-year-old leader was admitted to hospital on November 20th, suffering from pneumonia and other illnesses.
This news report was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 19 January 1996
Greece's ruling Pasok party yesterday chose Mr Costas Simitis (59) as its new leader following the resignation as prime minister of Mr Andreas Papandreou, who remains in hospital under intensive care.
Mr Simitis was chosen in a run-off involving 167 deputies from the party. He won with 86 votes, against 75 for pro-Papandreou candidate and interim prime minister, Mr Akis Tsohatzopoulos (56).
The latter had been expected to carry the election with the help of deputies who had voted in the first round for the two other candidates, the Defence Minister, Mr Gerassimos Arsenis – another Papandreou supporter, who garnered 50 votes – and a former deputy prime minister, Mr Yannis Haralambopoulos, who won 11.
Mr Simitis was a founding member with Mr Papandreou of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok). He emerged as a challenger to his ailing mentor last year and in opinion polls over the past two months was the favourite to win the succession race. His toughest rival was thought to be Mr Arsenis (64).
In recent weeks those close to Mr Papandreou’s wife, Ms Dimitra Liani, were said to have approached Mr Simitis offering support in return for assurances for her future.
Although yesterday’s vote makes him the new leader of the parliamentary party, he is in effect prime minister. He will receive his mandate from President Costis Stephanopoulos before facing a confidence vote in parliament. With a large absolute majority in the 300 seat parliament, Pasok should be able to serve out its four year term, which ends in October 1997.
Mr Simitis is considered the leader of Pasok’s reform and pro-EU wing. He has often criticised Mr Papandreou for dragging Athens away from Brussels politically, and in recent months was to the fore in demanding Mr Papandreou’s resignation. He led the “Gang of Four” who rose to challenge Mr Papandreou’s leadership after he won a third term in October 1993. The other members of the gang were the former European Affairs Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, the former European Commissioner for Social Affairs, Dr Vasso Papandreou (no relation to the former prime minister) and Mr Paraskevas Avgerinos.
The Simitis-led government is likely to break with the past and move away from the populist politics of Mr Papandreou. The new prime minister also faces the challenge of ensuring Pasok survives the post Papandreou era and of rebuilding the party in time for next year’s elections. He is expected to oversee a major shake-up of the present administration.
Mr Simitis previously served as Agriculture. National Economy, Education and Industry Minister and has been a member of every Pasok cabinet since 1981, when Mr Papandreou first swept to power.
He is a Supreme Court lawyer with his own practice. He studied law and economics in Marburg and at the London School at Economics, and taught commercial law in Athens. In 1967, when the military junta took power, he escaped abroad and rallied against the colonels with Mr Papandreou until returning to Greece after the fall of the dictators in 1974. He was first elected to parliament in 1985, and was respected for the austerity programme he introduced in 1985-1987.
Mr Simitis was named Industry Minister in 1993 but resigned in anger when Mr Papandreou blamed him publicly for bungling a privatisation plan for a state shipyard. The row and his resignation made him the natural leader of the party reformers.
He is married and has two daughters.
Mr Papandreou’s resignation this week ended nearly two months of political paralysis and confusion in Greece since the 76-year-old leader was admitted to hospital on November 20th, suffering from pneumonia and other illnesses.
This news report was published in ‘The Irish Times’ on 19 January 1996
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