Με
μια επιστολή που έστειλε στην αγγλική έκδοση της Ελευθεροτυπίας, η
Μαργαρίτα Παπανδρέου μιλάει για όλους και για όλα, γυρίζει πίσω στον
χρόνο και εξηγεί πως έμαθε ότι το όνομά της εμπλέκεται στην λίστα
Λαγκάρντ....
Διαφωνεί με τον γιό της και πρώην πρωθυπουργό της Ελλάδας,
Γιώργο Παπανδρέου για τους όρους με τους οποίους δανείστηκε η Ελλάδα και
η θέση της πηγαίνει λίγο πιο κοντά σ' εκείνη του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ.
“Αντί να δανειζόμαστε για να πληρώνουμε τα χρέη μας θα έπρεπε να
πληρώσουμε μόνο ότι θα ερχόταν η ανάπτυξη ξανά στην οικονομία μας", λέει
η κα Παπανδρέου.
Λέει
επίσης ότι σκοπεύει να καταθέσει μηνύσεις εναντίον του
ΠΡΩΤΟΥ ΘΕΜΑΤΟΣ αλλά και της εφημερίδας ΤΟ ΒΗΜΑ.Την επιστολή δημοσιεύει η
αγγλική έκδοση του enet.gr.
ΟΛΗ Η ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗ...
Over a month ago as I was climbing out of bed, my cell phone rang. The
voice said, “Margarita, there are articles in To Vima and Proto Thema
about you. Have you seen them?” I had stopped reading Greek newspapers
or listening to Greek TV newscasts because they kept telling lies, and
spewing out hatred, fear and anxiety. I don’t want this rage and
bleakness in my heart. I know we are better than that. The caller told
me that I was supposedly holding an account in Switzerland amounting to
$550m dollars!
I shouted, “Is this a joke?”
“You are on the Lagarde list,” the phone caller added. Christine Lagarde
is the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and former
French finance minister. The list was for uncovering tax-evasion
accounts of Greeks, and had been handed over to the “black money” unit
of the Greek government for investigation. It was from this unit that
bases most of its information on sheer gossip that my name was released
to the newspapers. I responded, “Holy Cow,” using the slang of my
childhood generation. “Another big lie!”
I have had a number of unexpected events in my life, in fact, I probably
should be on Ripley’s list. I was the daughter-in-law of a Greek prime
minister, the wife of a Greek prime minister and the mother of a Greek
prime minister. My name is Margarita Papandreou. It used to be Margaret
Chant, child of a working class family from Elmhurst, Illinois. Perhaps
it is not so strange that an American woman became First Lady of Greece.
It is consistent with the American dream mentality – a kind of rags to
riches story. But I never contemplated the riches that were now assigned
to me!
I have been described as having high ambitions though. Once in a journey
back to my home town as First Lady, I was interviewed by a young
journalist from the Chicago Tribune. It was to be “a local girl makes
good” story. His first question was “as a little girl running across the
plains of Illinois, did you ever dream that you would be the wife of
the prime minister of Greece?” When I was that age I didn’t even know
Greece existed, nor was I contemplating marriage to anybody. I replied
with mock seriousness, “ I dreamt I would BE the prime minister of
Greece.”
This revelation was picked up by Greek newspapers, and soon I was
charged with having ravenous ambitions, of training Greek women to deny
their cultural upbringing and heritage (this referred to my founding of a
grassroots feminist organisation), and that the prime minister must put
strong shackles on me. It was an early lesson on the use and misuse of
humor in public life. Or, at least, my type of humour.
Soon after the phone call from my friend, I had one of the Sunday papers
in my hand. There it was, with a fairly nice photo of me, “Mother of
George Papandreou involved in Lagarde list.” The second title next to my
photo was “as beneficiary of a $550m account”.
For quite a while now the Papandreou family has been targeted as the
vulture of the entire economic crisis in Greece. The more specific
target has been my son George, who, as head of the government, took a
loan from the International Monetary Fund – a move that was critical to
avoid declaring bankruptcy. He also started the reforms that were needed
to bring us out of the crisis.
These included crackdowns on foreign accounts. Over 54,000 have been
found with more money than they can account for. Rather than applaud,
the reformer is being called to task. As life worsened, as jobs got
lost, as salaries got cut and as pensions were chopped, there apparently
had to be a boogey man, a scapegoat, or in this case, a whole family.
Logical? No. But a population hurting, homeless and hungry, is unlikely
to use logic in explaining fate. And the newspapers loved to play it up
as well. My name had not yet been attacked. Now, it seems, was my turn.
I tried to consider what I would do, what my reaction should be to this
absolutely untrue charge. Then I got to thinking, dreaming maybe, what
could I do for Greece if I had that kind of money? Before I looked at
the revenge or attack option,
I let my mind wander, imagining different choices. I am an economist
only through osmosis. My husband Andreas was head of the department of
economics at the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to
developing one of the best departments of economics, in competition with
the one at Harvard, he was considered a member of the group of top
American economists: Galbraith, Samuelson, Kaysen, Tobin, and others.
Something rubbed off on me. Yet I am still an amateur at putting all
the pieces together and understanding the vocabulary ... flogged toxic
financial derivatives, financial cliff, robo signing, expansionary
fiscal expansion, austerity. Ah, that last one I know. We are living it
today. I used to like that word when I thought it meant self-restraint,
simplicity and self-discipline. As a child it fit my own developing
philosophy. It comes from the word “austere”, and the synonyms for that
word describe the situation our citizens confront today: harsh,
relentless, morose, severe punishment. That last one is it. We are being
punished. Not for something we have done – although we are part of the
problem, but for a system, the capitalist system gone awry. Or maybe
just doing its thing: exploiting the majority so the few at the top can
get rich.
I am not going to analyse all of this. I leave that up to the
professionals. But what I do know is that the austerity path does not
work. And what makes eminent sense to me is that you can’t ask a country
to pay back its debt and then rope its body. Let’s say as an
illustration that a divorced father does not pay for a child’s care. You
put him in jail, cutting him off from a job that provides income, and
until he pays, he can’t come out. Does that make sense? On the
austerity train, every shop that is obliged to close puts its employees
on the bread line. Every new tax declared takes food from the mouth of a
baby. And most of that money comes from the lower and middle classes.
Now I am Margaret Chant, the 15-year-old after school waitress, the bus
girl in the cafeteria of the University of Minnesota’s Student Union,
the riveter in the Douglas Aircraft factory during the war, and I am
crying out along with my fellow citizens, WHY US?
To return to my fantasy, with the money under my name, I would invest in
growth, in the country’s future. I would propose a national development
plan that would take advantage of our natural and human resources. It
will have a vision, for example that our country becomes the center of
health in the world. Instead of getting foreign money to pay back our
debt, we will pay only when our economy is booming again. And I would be
severe on reforms and needed changes of our institutions. I would
demand a national audit to know where indeed people have lots of money.
As for me and the charge against me, I have two choices. I could start
running over the plains, the mountains, and sea of this exceptionally
beautiful country, with its exceptionally warm-hearted people singing a
song from my native country’s 1950’s collection of music – “Make the
World Go Away, (get off my shoulders),” though at 89 years of age and a
serious fall a few years ago it is difficult for me to run anymore. Or I
could sue for slander those who constructed this monstrous story.
My choice is the latter.
* Margarita Papandreou is a former first lady of Greece. She contributed
this personal perspective to EnetEnglish, has written a book, Nightmare
in Athens, about the 1967-74 Greek dictatorship, and is now writing a
memoir
— Χίλιες «τσιριτσάντσουλες» του Γ. Αρσένη και του Π. Ευθυμίου, για να
μετατεθεί ο «πρίγκιπας» Αντρίκος ….από την Θεσσαλονίκη στο «εν Αθήνησι»
Πανεπιστήμιο. 
«Ηρθε η ώρα να λογοδοτήσουν στη Δικαιοσύνη όσοι άνανδρα, με ψέματα,
επιχείρησαν να αμαυρώσουν το όνομά μου και το όνομα Παπανδρέου. Η
οικογένειά μου, να το ξέρουν όλοι, δεν θα υποκύψει ποτέ στα κατεστημένα
συμφέροντα. οσο κι αν μας χτυπάνε, όσα ψέματα κι αν χρησιμοποιήσουν, όσα
σχέδια κι αν εκπονήσουν. Αυτό δήλωσε η κυρία Μαργαρίτα Παπανδρέου η
οποία προχώρησε σήμερα στην κατάθεση σειράς αγωγών για την εμπλοκή του
ονόματός της στη λίστα Λαγκάρντ.
Της Ελένης Καλογεροπούλου
