Word: papandreou
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Piraeus soccer stadium, the local race track and other detention centers to bring clothing and food to the 25 politicians and 5,000 alleged Communists who remained in army custody. Nervous about its image abroad, the government let foreign newsmen briefly visit the two star prisoners: Former Premier George Papandreou, 79, and his 48-year-old son Andreas, the antimonarchical leftists whose victory in next month's now-cancelled elections seemed so certain that the army had felt compelled to move first...
Since Papandreous forces in Parliament remained a majority, the King thereafter had to appoint feeble caretaker governments. Papandreou's eventual successor, Stephan Stephanopoulos (who was also arrested last week), succeeded in whittling the Papandreou majority to a bare plurality by forging a coalition of parties. At the same time, the whole country anxiously awaited the opening of the Aspida trial, in which 28 officers were charged with high treason. The raucous proceedings, which began last November and lasted for four months in an Athens court room, finally resulted in March in conviction and prison sentences for 15 of the defendants...
Another Crisis. By the time the Stephanopoulos government fell last December, few Greek leaders were willing to take on the task of heading a government. "There is not a single politician around who would be an excellent Premier," said the King. The situation seemed saved again when Papandreou reached an agreement with the head of the National Radical Union, Panayotis Kanellopoulos. Both agreed to back a caretaker government that would carry the country through elections to be held late in May. But the Center Union Party sponsored a motion that would have assured Andreas his parliamentary immunity between the time...
...People's Revolution." The Papandreous refused to back Kanellopoulos, claiming that the National Radical Union had rigged elections in the past and would do so again. Army leaders, on the other hand, were dismayed at the incredible knot tied by the politicians and were ever more fearful that Papandreou would once again reap gains at the polls. Moreover, they knew that Andreas Papandreou had been saying privately: "I am convinced that Greece must have a revolution...
...military's mood was not improved when placard-waving, pro-Papandreou forces took to the streets, battling right-wing students in Salonica and police in Athens. "This will be a constitutional deviation, a royal dictatorship," Papandreou predicted. "We have only one answer: a people's revolution." To this the King replied: "If Papandreou starts a revolution, I will start the counter-revolution." Unable to get enough votes to form a government, Kanellopoulos dissolved Parliament, set the elections for May 28?and thus, wittingly or unwittingly, cleared the stage for last week's coup...