My Breakfast with Nikos Androulakis, head of Greece's PASOK party
In Crete, the cradle of western civilization, politics is never far from the menu
His voice was raspy from weeks of campaigning, but his plate was full. And about to get fuller, because the Greek socialist party, or Pasok, under the tutelage of Nikos Androulakis won 32 seats in parliament in the second round of national elections on June 25, trailing behind only the predominant New Democracy and the decreasingly influential, hard left Syriza party.
Ahead of the vote on Sunday, Mr. Androulakis described what he called “an arrogant clientelist government whose every choice deconstructs the welfare state on a daily basis.” Well, what else would you expect the country’s leading socialist to say? Pasok is an acronym for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, Greece’s historically significant socialist party, though no longer the leading left-wing party (that would be Syriza).
In the current round of Greek elections, Pasok played the foil to New Democracy, the center-right party led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the previous and likely imminent Prime Minister. It’s the loose equivalent of the GOP, so obviously closer to business interests than, say, the typical social democratic agenda which would tend to prioritize workers’ rights, which is kind of cool especially considering that thanks to decades of systematic Democratic and Republican inaction and corruption in the United States workers in America have almost no rights at all. Just saying.
In an unrecorded conversation over an impromptu breakfast at Heraklion’s Megaron Hotel — Mr. Androulakis hails from Heraklion on the island of Crete — we chatted about more about the (in my view) sorry state of American politics than current trends in Greek politics. In his view low rates of voter turnout are problematic. He feels that younger people ought to be engaged more in the political process. I told him that with that Greece is one step ahead of America, where young and old are so fed up with bent politicians that they mostly tune out politics altogether. By the way, breakfast at the Megaron is very good — the lemon poppyseed loaf is out of sight!
Read more about travel in Crete here.