They had a common starting point – unbridled ambition. Along the way they also acquired a common link- guilt.
Each to their own. Those most active and “efficient” were those who, day by day, were spreading their reach – both hands – ever farther. They set up luxurious offices and began to specialize. They covered all sectors of economic activity. They received money and gave promises. All sorts of promises, ie cost-effecting (“this much of a percentage” for us salesmen) and lifesaving (this much and “we are good”).
The business was going well until new teams extortioners began to emerge from the tree of sin and the intrigues began for power management that their leader naively or deliberately ceded to them. As time went on, the predators felt that power was in their favor. And as frustrated as they were, they entered conflicts. Shame on them.
History teaches us that Agamemnon will eventually sacrifice Iphigenia. The leader will wake up eventually. And he will get rid of the dead weight.
The period of the dictatorship is not too far back and it has left the Greeks withseries of entertaining events on the management of power.
The story of the “minister” who was told from his driver that he would not be picked the next day because he had been fired is, mutatis mutandis, is didactic.
But the case of Roufogalis, head of Central Intelligence Agency (KYP), when Ioannidis abolished Papadopoulos in November of 1973, is as didactic as it is entertaining. The new dictator had given an order to surround the house Roufogalis, but also to let him wake up. Roufogalis divd it out at noon, about eight hours after Papadopoulos had successly been overthrown!
Stavros P. Psycharis
Originally published in the Sunday print edition
