On this day in 1919, a boy was born in Chios who was destined to be associated with the modern history of our country like few (perhaps no one) Andreas Papandreou. I don’t want to write about the positives and negatives of his political career and prime ministership, whether he helped the country by sinking Hora, the abolition of the criminal prosecution of adultery and the creation of the E.S.Y or whether he destroyed the country by the borrowed money from E.O.K with corruption (see dirty 89) but the Papandreou “phenomenon” – old PASOK the orthodox.
Andreas stands in 2024, 28 years after his death, as a totem of an era of virtual affluence that seems all too foreign to Gen Z who ate the 2008 financial crisis head on. Andreas is a living figure for a generation born after his death and has created a mythical image of him, initially through their own stories and later with the thousands of memes and references to the Old PASOK. The Balkan party that in the imagination of young people, whether their parents hated it because they were ideologically more to the left or more to the right, presented fun and horse riding as a normal lifestyle. Andreas (so he was referred to without his last name by the friends of the party because they considered him as one of their own), although he lived in America and studied there, he knew the Greek dialect, was a merbandist, danced, drank whiskey and this opened a window to a more relaxed life visa for the Greeks coming out of the dark period of the Junta.
Andreas Papandreou, for the generations that did not live him as a political man, is the man who symbolizes a lost Greek carelessness that their parents had and lost and an era of “wildness” that has passed irretrievably, a period when things seemed to be done for the common people better, an era that died forever with the memos.
We have collected 15 photos of Andreas for the older ones to reminisce and for the younger ones to get a little taste of Andreas’ phase, which was working with the whole “axis of evil” for the West, such as Arafat and Gaddafi but also with Clinton. who danced zeibekies in Bellou and Tsitsanis and talked with Mikis Theodorakis.
Papandreou with Tsitsanis whom he adored
With his father, the “Old man of democracy” with whom they had clashed, a few times.
With Karamanlis
With Jacques Chirac
While one was with the “Iron Lady” of neoliberalism
He had no problem seeing one of the USA’s greatest enemies, Fidel Castro
He was close to Yasser Arafat the leader of the Palestinian PLO and the Fatah party
With Muammar Gaddafi with whom he had good relations and his son GAP
Zeibekies in Bellou
With Florakis who is said to have had a terrible weakness for him
With his “enemy” Konstantinos Mitsotakis
With Konstantinos Mitsotakis before the apostasy
With Dalaras, his wife Dimitra Lianis and George Lianis
Next to Melina Merkouris who also appointed her minister of culture and Aliki Vougiouklakis
The historic nod to Dimitra Liani
And here a historical testimony of Rita Sakellariou who loved him and loved her.
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