1896 redux.

Despite all of the attention I've been paying to Spain's elections, I haven't forgotten about Greece, which last weekend ended thirteen years of rule under the liberal PASOK government by voting in Karamanlis and his conservative Nea Demokratia party (although the terms "liberal" and "conservative" really are misnomers in Greece, where the political spectrum runs from PASOK's "very left of center" to Nea Demokratia's "only slightly left of center"). PASOK, which had been assailed time and time again for allowing corruption to run rampant during its tenure, really hit rock bottom in its popularity as a result of the ongoing headache of the upcoming Olympic Games, so much so that even the time-honored Greek practice of securing political support through doling out government jobs couldn't stem the rising tide of outrage.

The funny thing is that this happened before the last time the Greeks had the Olympics, back in 1896. Preparations for the games were over budget and behind schedule, so much so that the International Olympic Committee was threatening to cancel the Games outright or move them to London or Paris. Sound familiar? The culprit back then was a do-nothing Parliament dominated by officials who were either indifferent or outright opposed to the idea of Athens hosting the revival of the Olympics, a deadlock that was only broken by the efforts of IOC President and diaspora Greek Demetrios Bikelas, who successfully lobbied Crown Prince Constantine to rally the labor unions and the Athenian public around the Olympic cause and force an election that brought the royalists back to power and put the Games back on track.

Flash forward to 2004, where once again the Greek royalists (Nea Demokratia is the party sympathetic to the return of the Greek monarchy) have recaptured Parliament and promised to deliver the Olympiad on time. Will history repeat itself? If so, Karamanlis and his fellow conservatives might just secure their hold on the government past next year's general elections, when their coalition becomes vulnerable again to a liberal counterattack. Of course the real Olympic wild card is the possibility of another terrorist attack, now that the Madrid bombings have proved Europe just as vulnerable to al-Qaeda as the rest of the world. Let's hope that the Greeks - who to their credit worked overtime to shut down the hitherto elusive November 17th terrorist organization, albeit after years and years of prodding from the U.S. and Western Europe - can keep the Games safe for the myriad athletes, officials, and fans; not to mention the customary millions of tourists who descend upon the country every summer!