Greece: The Besieged King

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Papandreou's Center Union Party won an unprecedented 53% of the vote in national elections and carried 171 seats in the 300-seat Greek Parliament. Greece seemed about to enter another period of stable government under the new Premier. But no sooner had he taken over than Papandreou started a mass transfer of pro-palace military officers to the hinterlands, shuffling off no fewer than 2,350 officers to outlying districts away from the army nerve centers in the cities. Since the King must turn to the army when in trouble, Constantine did not like to see his loyal officers so dispersed.

Soon afterward charges by General George Grivas, the Greek army commander on Cyprus, shook the Papandreou government like a row of fig trees in a thunderstorm. Grivas said that he had uncovered a plot on Cyprus in which a group of junior officers were plotting to overthrow the monarchy, purge the army of royalists, and install an army brand of socialism. Their code name, he said, was Aspida (shield), but his most damaging statement was that their leader was none other than Papandreou's son Andreas, onetime chairman of the department of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and for a while a naturalized U.S. citizen. Andreas' ambitions, his brash style and socialist leanings make him nothing less than a political outlaw to the royalists.

When the King asked for "an administrative investigation" of the Aspida plot, the elder Papandreou tried to fire the Defense Minister, who was to conduct the inquiry, and attempted to take over the job himself. In his first big political test a mere 16 months after ascending the throne, King Constantine held firm. He told Papandreou that he would allow any member of the Center Union Party to conduct the investigation but, since it primarily involved Papandreou's son, he would not allow Papandreou to be the final judge of what action to take. Papandreou accused the King of unconstitutional meddling in politics, and resigned. His supporters went surging through the streets, rioting. It was the summer of 1965—the tensest time in Greece since the Communist insurgency of 1946-49.

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. The royalists hoped to embarrass the Papandreous even further, but Son Andreas could not be brought to trial because he enjoyed immunity from prosecution as a member of Parliament.