This Greek goverment really seems terribly petty and childish.
Unfortunately, this is true. Populism has become a global epidemic, if not a pandemic, and all politicians, targeting re-election, are
plus royalistes que le roi - a l' envers in this instance, to enhance their appeal to the masses which, for the most part are not very fond of the former King of Greece.
I don't understand why they want to behave in this manner to a man who wanted to dedicate his life to Greece.......
No one could dispute that the former king wanted to dedicate his life to Greece. The question was, however, whether Greece could get a benefit out of it, to which 70% of her people opined negatively. At this juncture, former King Constantine, whose sincerety cannot be questioned, is not prohibited to dedicate his life to Greece in a private fashion or, after becoming a Greek citizen, in the political arena by running for political office - as former King Symeon of Bulgaria did successfully.
........but who was driven from his country without any reason (IMHO).
In his separate interviews to journalists Messrs. Kouloglou and Papahelas (both published also in the official site of the former Royal Family of Greece), former King Constantine acknowledges that the historic
letters to premier George Papandreou were a wrong move and that the latter prime minister had warned him that a conflict between the Democratic Party and the Monarch could be catastrophic. The King's move prompted the resignation of George Papandreou, the constitutional anomaly of July 1965, known as
Iouliana, and created the substrate for a two-year instability that eventually led to the coup d' etat.
Second, the former King of Greece chose to proceed with the swearing in of a handful of peasant, ignorant colonels as his government. In retrospect, it is widely recognized that he exercised poor judgement for, had he declined to do so, these vigilantes would have been arrested pronto and a seven-year catastrophic dictatorship would have been aborted.
Third, in December 1967, by which time the dictators had established and secured themselves, former King Constantine, misjudging the degree of his personal appeal to the Armed Forces, planned a counter-coup which became a fiasco.
To conclude, former King Constantine took three exams within three years and failed them all.
These people should be ashamed of themselves!
I agree fully with you. However, with the luminous exception of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Bill Clinton, the entire Western World has not seen even a barely competent, let alone decent, politician, for at least 10 years now.
