opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr

In the wee hours of 23 June, just before the second round of Greek parliamentary elections, I was staying up to finish off a work task, and instead of Law and Order Criminal Intent, I’m watching the electoral speech of Zoe Konstantinopoulou: daughter of the president of SYRIZA’s predecessor party, former unsmiling SYRIZA speaker of parliament, and during her tenure, simultaneously target of sexist abuse, and parliamentarian terror. (Australians: think Bronwyn Bishop, but with the Greens. In a country where the Greens won the elections.)

She was now at the edge of getting voted in with her own party Course of Freedom (and was in fact elected), with a new, incongruously smiling softie image, complete with heart hands…

… and she’s still promising to be a terror. She is outright promising to abuse her privileges as a former Speaker of Parliament, to push her agenda. “I am allowed to introduce new agenda items to any political leaders’ meeting, even if they’ve declared the agenda closed.” That was one of a dozen undertakings.

I don’t know why the founding fathers of the Hellenic Republic allowed such privileges to former speakers of parliament, but I assume they did not anticipate former speakers were also going to be firebrand minor party leaders. They must have thought they’d be docile elder statesperson types.

Thing about the Greek constitution: you don’t need a big old referendum or a constitutional convention to change the constitution. If Konstantinopoulou does abuse a bunch of constitutional loopholes like she’s promising (“an opposition such as has never been exercised before!!!”), well, loopholes can be closed.

…. She’s getting more and more unhinged as she goes.

I WILL WAGE THE KIND OF OPPOSITION THIS COUNTRY HAS NEVER SEEN!

*smile*

YOU! GREEK CITIZEN! YOU WILL NEVER BE ALONE! WE WILL ALWAYS BE TOGETHER!

*smile*

She also was saying how unacceptable it is that Greek politicians yell at each other in front of the cameras, and then backslap behind the cameras. As she saw to her disgust, during her time as speaker and terror of parliament. Heaven forbid that anybody in parliament actually get anything done together behind the scenes. There shall be yelling at each other behind the scenes too. She’ll make sure of it, in all those closed-door meetings she’s allowed to barge into, as former speaker of parliament.

Yeah, not everything in this country makes me smile….

She was followed by the political statement of Breath of Freedom, the anti-vaxxer party. I switched them off: there are limits, and the party president (a prof of medicine at Salonica U, no less) had just declared pollution fake news.

Ed Conway shuddered at the possibilities of the Former Speaker Barging In principle as applied to the US, and I could only concur:

Athens Cathedral (“the metropolis”). Tucked in the corner, the cathedral’s Mini Me, the far older Church of Panagia Gorgoepikoos (Our Lady of Granting Requests Promptly), aka The Little Metropolis.

Facing down the cathedral, the statue of archbishop Damaskinos.

Greek religious leaders are not shot, they are hanged. Kindly respect that tradition.

The other statue in the Square outside Athens Cathedral is quite famous, but surprisingly inconspicuous in real life: Constantine XI, last emperor of the Romans.

The inscription is Constantine’s final response to Mehmed the Conqueror, as recorded by the chronicler Sphranzes:

As to surrendering the city to you, it is not for me to decide or for anyone else of its citizens; for all of us have reached the mutual decision to die of our own free will, without any regard for our lives.

There are in fact plenty of nicer bits of Athens, all of them characterized by the fact that they are nowhere near the city center. My relatives and friends have taken me to several of them, including Kifisia and Palio Faliro and Glyfada.

And so it was that I ended up at Souare bar in Dafni, owned by relatives of my relatives. (To be precise: cousin’s godfather’s daughter.) Once again, a street between the band and the punters, but at least no cars crawling in between this time.

As the singer put it:

Music brings people together..

… Admittedly there is a street between us right now.

Balmy night, cool takes on the last 20 years’ pop (my cousin’s bf on drums).

And me feeling every one of my 51 years as I was standing up all night, and had been walking all day. Which is what a town with adequate public transport does to you.

The singer is under 30. OF COURSE her name is Iphigenia.

… This comment occasioned several queries among my Facebook followers, including Ed Conway’s inevitable:

Does she moonlight during the daytime in maritime logistical problem solving? 

That aside:

Did Greece ever have the saints names law like France?

They had something better, the full moral force of the Orthodox Church.