For sometime now and with increasing intensity one hears nostalgic or expediently prophetic comments regarding the comeback of an army takeover of political power, adorned with descriptions of the 1967 military junta whom they describe as ʽbetterʼ and less ʽcorruptʼ and ʽuntouchableʼ than todayʼs junta. This is totally and utterly wrong and reflects simple propaganda – laying the groundwork for the ultimate solution that the present regime has prepared – due to the rigid resistance and reaction by the Greek People.
Based on these comments but also on the various officially-sounding invitations to the Greek People to accept a military junta, we can easily surmise and without being specialists, see through the last move of the holders of the present regime, if the GAP experiment (that is, suppression via counter-constitutional action and psychological / communicative violence in combination with a police state mentality and oppression) fails miserably. This experiment has not only failed miserably but it has had the utterly unintended consequence of generalizing a politicization of the Greeks coupled however by an intense disaffection for and de-partisanship for all standing political parties. These are the signs for the political maturity and coming of age of a People and hence, that Peopleʼs enabling and active use of its power supremacy.
So, what is this last move or plan, seen through the various analyses and comments?
It is probable that we will be exposed to a traumatic, dramatic and socially-harmful default or some other equally dramatic event (which is in and of itself either innocuous or of mediocre significance, which however will be handled by the mass media as the coming of the Armageddon foretold by the Mayas) crying and tearing their clothes over the ʽobviousʼ lack of government, anarchy, ineptitude, chaotic situation, etc.
Amidst this communicative pandemonium, cronies of the regime (and so far totally ignorable) will come to claim that the ʽcountry has entered a stage of unprecedented crisisʼ and will enforce a coup dʼ etat (or a ʽrevolutionʼ for their sympathizers) followed by a complete enforced repeal of the power of the Constitution and Human Rights in the name of the ʽmotherlandʼ. Perhaps to make the charade stick, they may arrest one or two, who will later claim ʽanti-regime statusʼ, while the rest will wallow in luxury while in ʽself-exileʼ somewhere in Paris or New York, lying in wait for the moment when the terror of the armed junta will force the Greek People to forget and forgive their own previous junta (via the riot police blitz forces), defeatism and treasonous collaboration with the present economic occupiers, so that the ʽexiledʼ will return again as ʽtriumphant resistance fightersʼ with all their sins expunged.
However, the Greek People will have inexorably and irrevocably lost Rights, Independence and territory (let us not forget that Turkey, Skopje and Albania have already been sitting behind their territorial claims and are waiting for the right moment) while nothing will have been salvaged socially or economically. Likewise, during a junta, there will be no way to make use of any due process since there will be no legislative infrastructure to build it upon.
All those full of nostalgia for the 1967 colonelsʼ comeback to power, hide the fact that these were not simple army brass, but active collaborators of the palace, the politicians and deeply embroiled in the Secret Service, all of whom collaborated to ʽcurb public political expressionʼ as this was defined by Gregorios Lambrakis. The junta dreamers hide very well the fact that these people, just as GAP nowadays, had been completely and utterly conforming and servile to foreign powers and international capital (refer to the blinding success of particular industrialists and protection of the old capitalist guard during the 1967 junta), of the US, as well as to other facets of American imperialism and globalization; that they got embroiled in scandals of huge proportions which were summarily covered up; that they governed in a reign of terror, similar to the one now enforced by GAP.
Hence, the second coming of a military junta does not reflect a fall of todayʼs dictatorship but its transmutation in a new regime which will simply justify more raw and cruel force against the People and official effrontery and debauchery without any need for legitimacy. Under no circumstances should the Greek People accept it just as we have not accepted Papandreouʼs junta.
It is also apparent that GAP and his junta have failed miserably as is shown by the mass of anti-riot blitz forces he mobilizes to secure his two-hour long opening speech at the International Trade Fair of Thessalonica, as well as by the degree of disobedience and the average citizenʼs utter disregard for the ʽlawsʼ and ʽregulationsʼ constantly voted into effect and which GAP desperately tries to enforce by means of indirect exaction via the household power utility bill (showing, in other words, that he is totally incapable of securing even such an exorbitantly – extortionary tactic no matter how short-lived and ineffectual this might prove to be again).
The goal of the regime is one and only: to cede the sum total of Greece to private investors, the age-long coveters of its national wealth who have been continuously trying since 1944 to regain what was snatched from their clutches then. And because the People have shouted ʽnoʼ to them, their last resort is to allow a bunch of official junta-backed cronies, just as the case was with the Thasos oil reserves and the natural resources of our Cyprus (not to mention cases such as these of ESSO PAPPAS in Macedonia and elsewhere).
To the question what we could do if tanks one morning started rolling in the streets, Pattakos himself has already and quite recently answered with superfluous disdain: ʽif the people told us to leave, we would leaveʼ after of course shedding enough blood, as he admitted in a pertinent question later.
The point is that much more blood was shed with their remaining and maintenance of their coup while by means of the mechanism I described above, the future of our Country was jeopardized after the official end of the coup with the comeback of all the political woodworm with whom the junta brass had collaborated to throttle peopleʼs expression back in 1967 and literally set the country in a cast for seven years.
We cannot allow this to happen again. GAPʼs junta will fall only with our own doing, AS A RESULT OF OUR OWN UNITY, DECISIVENESS AND FEARLESSNESS. And right afterwards, we should never again allow any ʽnational saviourʼ to drop by because the only National Saviour is the Greek People who saves the Nation at all times, a truth that can be proven historically.
In the days that we all live in, and with a pretty clear idea of what is lying ahead, we can no longer feel fear for what might happen to us if we all step forth in a demonstration with a clear target of clearing OUR Parliament from all those oath breakers, offspring of dynasties and enemies of the people as demanded by the Constitution which has been torn to shreds by the likes of them but which has already been soaked in Greek Blood and to which we commit ourselves.
Many are the sayings conveying the message that whoever is scared about losing what he possesses, he will lose even that he hopes to keep, but there is also a relative excerpt from the Gospel (as well as in Greek Education and Culture) that ʽwhoever is scared of losing his life, so he shall, while he who does not, will win itʼ.
The time has come to stop the cyclical transmutation of a junta and the occupiers from a coup of the military form to that of a parliamentary form to that of a police state under a parliamentary form, only to return to that of a military form for ever and anon.