Word: junta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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FIVE YEARS ago today, on April 21, 1967, a coup d'etat imposed on the Greek people a military junta, which is still in power. It was a slap that caught everybody unaware. For months the politicians of the Center and especially of the Left had been talking about the danger of a military dictatorship. But nobody expected that it would actually happen...
...rumble of armored cars in the streets, and officers warning everybody to stay in their houses. It was all so swift and well organized that nobody reacted. Only three people were killed in Athens that day, trying to get out into the streets to see what was happening. The junta boasted on the bloodlessness of their "revolution." During the night of the coup, 16,000 people--mainly members of the Parliament, journalists, labor leaders, and members of left-wing organizations--were rounded up. Some were kept under house arrest. Most were sent to concentration camps on remote Aegean islands. Some...
...today is the fifth anniversary, and the dictatorship has lasted. Through these years the role of the junta has become increasingly clear. The coup was a reaction of the Greek ruling establishment against the threatening prospects of a new current in Greek politics. It happened about a month before the elections that were going to end a period of manufactured anomaly in the parliament with an electoral victory of the Center and of the Left. The Greek ruling establishment was one of the most reactionary in Europe. It was not even, as in most other European countries, a national bourgeoisie...
...beginning the reaction to the junta was that it did not have any support, that if everybody showed their disdain by boycotting the regime, then the regime would fall. Some hoped the junta was just a temporary parenthesis, a group of misled patriots who would eventually return the country to democracy. Others believed that once the Great Western Powers saw that the politicians and the intellectuals were against the junta, they would intervene to restore democracy. But nothing happened. The U.S. Government, despite a few gestures of disapproval by isolated Congressmen, not only continued but increased its military...
...seemed until last week, when three Athens newspapers-all of whom support the junta-simultaneously blossomed with editorials questioning Constantine's continued role. One even called for a new constitution that would make Greece a presidential republic. What was going on? Apparently the regime was trying to find out if the King was still popular. If so, the junta could only have been encouraged by the apathetic public response to the editorials. The colonels' evident goal: a republican system, with an army man-probably Premier George Papadopoulos-as President...