by Panayotis Doumas
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What would a twenty-five year old woman need to do to be appointed prefect at the time Greece was governed by Ali Babandreou and his group of thieves? We cannot be sure, and the time to investigate that further is limited. What we can do, is allow our imagination to portray the role of young woman in the company of the irresponsible thieves of PA.SO.K who swallowed for eight consecutive years all state and non-state funds and eventually scattered their leftovers to the reduced to poverty Greek nation in order to rescue as many votes as they could. This environment of moustached, fat, macho-men left an ambitious woman with only two options. The one was to grow a moustache and try to join in. The other was to carefully remove her existing moustache, use her female charm and jump into the gutter, and this is what Anna Diamantopoulou chose to do!
A few months ago the British newspaper "Financial Times" in a satirical photomontage presented the body of a well know supermodel with the head of the Greek commissioner in the European Union. The title of the photomontage was "Big Sister". The attacks against her, not only by the English press, but by the European press and the press unions as a whole, followed some announcements she made regarding the new measures the European Union is planning to take in order to prohibit the publishing and broadcasting of "sexist" programmes and advertisements in the European press and media. This would mean that the topless girls on the front page of "Bild" or the third page of "The Sun" and "The Mirror" would have to wear some clothes and look for a new profession, since according to Mrs Diamantopoulou such pictures are practically racist.
It was not however the first time Mrs. Diamantopoulou caused reactions. Recently she had once again caused agitation in the circles of the member states, by announcing the intention of the European Commission to impose strict measures in support of the fight against smoking. With American legislations as a model, and with the support of the Irish delegate for health issues, David Byrne, she announced of subsequent absolute prohibition of smoking in closed public areas, even if these were places of amusement such as night-clubs, bars or pubs.
Interestingly enough, even though all of these announcements of the Greek Commissioner appear to the European partners of Greece particularly strict, for the untamed Greeks themselves they seem so unrealistic that they refuse to even comment on them, even though they originate from their compatriot and representative in the European Commission. But so what, if the free-spirited Greeks don’t care about what Mrs. Diamantopoulou says. Even for them, some of the points on her agenda cannot be left without comment or allow them to continue being apathetic and indifferent. What does it matter if the Greek population completely ignored the new regulations of the Ministry of Health in relation to smoking, and that one year latter the prohibitory plates for smoking and the spaces for non-smokers in restaurants and bars have disappeared, Mrs. Diamantopoulou has found the way to upset even them...
The recipe to achieve that included some statements she made in relation to the official Greek language. In March 2001 in a question posed from a journalist of the magazine "7 days TV", asking what bothered her most in Greek television, she replied: "The abuse of the Greek language! I believe that anybody presenting/appearing on TV programmes should attend a Greek language seminar before doing anything else". Following this statement of hers and after realising the impossibility of her suggestion, she decided to abuse the Greek Language herself. In an interview she gave to the Greek Newspaper "Kathimerini" (30/11/2001), Mrs Diamantopoulou made the following unprecedented statement: "The English language should be established as second official language of the Greek state. Europe will resemble a modern Babel, since more than 20 languages will exist and be spoken at one time. Who can imagine a process with simultaneous translation in 20-22 languages? Our country should look to the future and prepare itself by establishing English as our second official language sooner rather than latter". In her mind the process for her compatriots should be different than in other European States. Can you imagine her saying the same to the French or the Germans? And all this in 2001, the "European Year of Languages".
However, from November 2001, when the Greeks first got to recognise her name, and until today, when the Commissioner reads her name on the newspapers on a daily basis, some things have changed. These days Mrs. Diamantopoulou avoids any intense frictions between herself and her so called "compatriots". She herself she now feels, more than anything, a "European Citizen", as she stated while criticizing the recent referendum in Sweden in an interview ("Eleftherotypia", 21/9/2003). "There is a gap in the communication of what it means to be a European Citizen" she mentioned in that same interview. In fact it looked like should couldn't care less about the criticism she received from the former President of The Greek Democracy (who incidentally was elected by the political party she belongs to) Mr Christos Sartzetakis who said that "She is not Greek" ("Eleftherotypia", 24/11/2001).
Nowadays Mrs. Diamantopoulou leaves all the dirty work for the second "Big Sister", member of the European Parliament representing PA.SO.K, Mrs Karamanou. And no matter how hard someone looks, he will not be able to find even one statement of Mrs Diamantopoulou supporting the views of her colleague/comrade and super-feminist in relation to the abolition of the restrictions in access for women to the "Holy Mountain" area of Northern Greece (Athos peninsula). She now prefers to attend dinners with the Archbishop in "Zappio" (Athens’ Central Park), or meet up with the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in Brussels, in order to discuss current issues and problems of the European Union.
Obviously the building of an image that will allow her to return to the Greek political scene and go after top government offices has priority for her at the moment. Her intentions to return to Greek politics as well as the reaction of the prime minister’s circle are common knowledge anyway. In questions relating to her plans after the completion of her current duties she replies: "I am a fighting politician and I hope and plan to re-enter the Greek Parliament" ("Ependitis", 6/5/2000).
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Even if not very old, the 44 year old Mrs Diamantopoulou has been involved with politics for quite a few years. At the age of 25 (!!!) she was appointed, by the then Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, prefect of Kastoria. In 1988, before she even hit 30, she was awarded important governmental posts with the climax being her appointment as undersecretary for the Ministry of Growth and Development, just before taking her current position in the European Parliament. She is married with another former prefect (of Lakonia) and the only professional parenthesis for her (outside politics), was the four-year period in which the country was governed by the otherwise permanent Opposition to PA.SO.K, the New Democracy party. Her ascension to the elite of the "modernisers" of Kostas Simitis (who in vain tried to position her at the top of that group) recently faced problems. The biggest ones in the occasion of the revelation of two consecutive scandals as published by a pro-government newspaper only a week after the Big Sister comments in the Financial Times.
In detail, the newspaper "Avriani" (30/6/2003) reveals that Mrs. Diamantopoulou is the owner of a five-level block of flats, built in a land of 500 sq.m., in one of the most expensive regions of Athens. This property in valued at a few million Euros, nevertheless Mrs. Diamantopoulou declares that she bought half of the land mentioned above in 1994 for 10.000.000 Drs. (€ 29.350), while for the construction of the building (that was completed at the end of the 90s) she claims she spent €250.000. Note here that the land in the area the building was built has not been traded for anything less than 20.000.000 Drs for many years before 1994. In fact even before Mrs Diamantopoulou was given the right to vote (at the age of 18). As far as the construction of the 440 sq.m. building is concerned, if she only spent €250.000, the only thing we can assume is that maybe it was ... made in China with cheap labour!
Some of her implacable comrades in PA.SO.K, took advantage of these accusations, the complaints about her immoderate ambition and the doubling of the Olympic Games Constructions budget, and made up the following joke: "The governing political party of the Socialists build expensive Olympic constructions and ... cheap houses"(Kathimerini, 21/8/2003).
While Mrs Diamantopoulou was denying/contradicting all of the rumours created by the above statements and was threatening with legal action all the involved parties, a new revelation by an MP of New Democracy, Mr Nakos, came out. On the 9th of July, in a Parliament session, the MP accused Mrs Diamantopoulou that she and her husband managed a company named ERGOPLAN S.A. that embezzled money from the Social Security Fund of the European Union. The accusation were once again followed by legal action taken on Mrs Diamantopoulou behalf, since as she stated, both she and her husband had resigned from this company the minute she was entrusted with her new duties in the European Commission.
All these events however, constitute only a small parenthesis in the ambitions of the Big Sister. Or is that not true? The profile of a powerful politician is built with patience. She does not make easy errors, as other ambitious comrades in PA.SO.K, while she fights with zeal for the social teams from which she intends to draw most of her clientele. The question is how does she achieve this? With grotesque laws, like the last one (with which she introduced the feminist lobby of PA.SO.K) which compels the parties to include at least a 33% of women in their ballot lists, in local elections. This law was later characterised by the Greek court as anti-constitutional.
Following her feminist populism addressing all women and especially Muslim women, the support of which has constituted one of her highest political priorities so far, immigrants are next on the list. Don’t think that she will illegally bring people from the other side of the world and issue them with fake voting cards, as the leader of her party is believed to have, unstylishly but successfully, done in the last elections. In her usual style she is using the European commission to achieve her goals. This time she is proposing, since last June, that all non EU immigrants should be aloud to vote on local and European Parliament elections ("Ta Nea", 04-06-2003).
How far can we possibly be before the time when all these immigrants will be allowed to vote in the national elections as well? How long before political parties are obliged to include a certain percentage of immigrants in their ballots? Who knows? What we do know however is that with the continuous cession of sovereign rights to Brussels, we are heading towards a new era where national local elections will lose even more of their power and status to the benefit of European elections. May Allah look after her and the rest of the EU well-wishers.