Interview with Stefanos Nikolaidis

There are people who they read for the Transition and others who They experienced. OR Dora Bakoyannis It clearly belongs to the second category – and even to the most intense version of. As one political with rugged personalitysaw from very close democracy to return to the place where it gave birth to; Greece to be up again on her feetand the political world to seek new stability After dark years. In the political scene, she has existed pioneer: the first female foreign minister; Mayor of Athens, Member of Parliamenta voice with experience but also memory.

Fifty -one years after the fall of dictatorshipDora Bakoyannis speaks to skai.gr for those he thinks that were wonfor the errors where heavy Still, for how the Greece grew up – but also for the What do we owe to the new generation. With pure speech and maturity her long -termunraveling not only political journey her Transition but also deep personal relationship her with her.

The whole interview:

– You have lived through the Transition not only as a politician but also as an eyewitness to a traumatic national transformation. If you were asking you to describe in one word the core of these 50+1 year old, what would it be and why?

The word freedom. The younger generation cannot understand what the word freedom meant us when we came out 20 years old then from a dictatorship. A dictatorship that sent us to exile, put us in prison, interrogated us, where the newspapers were censored and you could not write anything where you could not sing the songs of Mikis Theodorakis. Everyone was enemies. You could not see a free theater, the theaters’ texts were censored.

This was another Greece. A Greece damaged defensively. We had had the greatest tragedy a country could have having lost half of Cyprus from a military invasion. The state was in complete disintegration, there was nothing to work. In this damaged Greece when we returned and returned Konstantinos Karamanlis, I don’t even know if today a young man realizes what we owe this man: he got a dismantled Greece, set her on her feet again. He set up democracy. This liberal democracy that has been in this country for 50 years – with its good, with its bad, up and down as everyone in the world – is that gives stability against many difficulties. Greece had open wounds: it was divided, ashamed. There is no worse feeling than feeling ashamed of your country.

This Greece was set up by the Transition. And she set her up well. With its weaknesses yes, with its problems yes, with its populism. But she set her up. He set up institutions that work and finally gave prestige to Greece in ’74, while we were on the sidelines, internationally isolated, without allies. Greece today has nothing to do with then. It is a Greece within the European Union, with strong defense alliances, with an army that operates. A Greece with pride. Think about where we were and where we arrived.

“We are very easily divided – Europe is not packages but institutions”

– So I understand that the greatest democratic conquest of the post -political period is undoubtedly the country’s accession to the EEC in 1979, right? Of course, the 1975 Constitution was preceded by the first stone.

Exactly! People did not realize that when Constantine Karamanlis put Greece in the EEC, we were alone, alone. To remind you then there was the slogan “EEC and NATO, the same trade union”, while others were leaving. Let me tell you I remember myself behind a pillar of Zappeion to watch the signature and I said at that moment “My God, this signature will protect us from the next junta.” Because for 2-3 years every now and then we were thinking about whether some may not be brought together again, but something else.

So this signature was made for democracy to preserve democracy in this country. And he did. That is, Europe was not the packages as the Greeks learned to think after many years. It was not, for example, the Delor packages with the Mediterranean programs, they were institutions. It was democracy, it was the security of this system.

Of course, I do not hide that sometimes today I hear people who do not realize what all this is marked and makes sense. Let my grandchildren say ask me “the dictatorship when it was, before or after 1821?” They have no idea. But as Churchill had said, democracy is when the door knocks on you in the morning and you know it’s Galatas. Do you know how much it is important to know that Galatas is and not open the door to capture you?

– After that, let’s reverse the question a little and go to the pathogens. What in your opinion is the most persistent and unsolved deficit of the post -political period these 50 + 1 years?

They are still and there are reasonable party parties that are difficult to uproot. Logic of rushes, rationales of micro -female, logic that went through stages that had been dressed and ideological cloak. That is, we went through the 80’s that had the ideological argument that “if you are PASOK, you are entitled to do things”.

Also, a curse of our country that is very difficult to overcome is division. We are easily divided by my child, this is ill. We have not yet reached the point of cultivating the logic of consensus. This is something that costs us very much. That is, “I’m just right and you are only wrong”. And this in turn creates a sign above you, which according to who has the majority protects or rejects you.

I believe the next step of the Transition will be seen in this country from the time we discover the logic of consensus. Not the compulsory consensus like the one that Tsipras made with Kammenos as a necessary evil for the numbers to come out, but of the substantive consensus. Can we not be able to consent to key foreign policy issues or education? You will not be a minister either. I doubt you will live to see the result of a generation that will have the level of leading to a better tomorrow.

‘Democracy is never a given’

– Because you referred to populism, I want you to tell me hand in my heart: There were times when you were concerned or fear that the foundations of the building called the Transition are dangerous?

Not that they are simply ripping, that they are crumbling. In 2015 when we arrived in Amen … I will never forget the concentration in the Syntagma for YES. It was a gathering in which we knew each other. It is very dangerous to be an active politician and go to a concentration where you know the world. Mean you are very few. We were very few, we knew each other, we knew each other. From Konstantinos Mitsotakis, 97, to his stick to the young children who were afraid that tomorrow their future would have been completely destroyed.

But at that time I was afraid that what we believed, what we built and what we fought was demolished. But my father used to say that “Greece is promoted to live and will live.” And somewhere there is a god of Greece who puts his last minute hand and saves the situation.

In terms of populism, populism is the result of democracy. This is not a Greek phenomenon. We have invented it in the sense that we invented democracy and together with democracy from ancient times we have had populists. But today populism is the great threat to democracy worldwide. Democracy today is receding at all levels unfortunately. Some like us and me that I have been fighting for human rights in democracy all my life, precisely because I am a product of a lack of democracy, we are worried about democracy.

What worries me the most is when the institutions in the world’s largest democracy are challenged, such as the US. When basic principles of law and human rights are challenged, when there are questions about things we considered solved, when today the war is ante portas in various European countries, it is very worrying. So the new generation that will take over the country’s leadership in the future should realize that these concepts are never given. You fight for them, you defend them. “

“There is no democracy without participation”

– I started with the young people and I will finish with the young people. What would you say to a 17 -year -old today who sees politics with disbelief or indifference? What would you like to hold as a repository from the route of the Transfiguration?

The participation. There is no worse thing than abstention. If you are not interested in yourself and your environment, others will decide for you. And those who decide will be those whose interests will serve any politics tomorrow, not yours.

So when many people see politics in dislike and says “all politicians are scarpies and useless”, okay you are in this position. Get in to become a better politician than me. You get in your own battle, for your own generation and for your own interests. There is no democracy without participation. Anyway, whatever the result, some majority will be done and countries will be ruled in the Republic.

But a government with 1,000,000 voters and a government with 7,000,000 voters has a big difference. Because without the participation of the world, the consensus of the wider and the belief that we must go better tomorrow, this new world cannot be erected.

– That’s true. After all, we are living in a juncture today where voices about the “end of the transition” or the need for “post-transition” are heard. Do you think this cycle has closed or still have open accounts with our democratic maturation?

First of all, I do not see the Transition as a circle, but as a straight one. As a timeless line, but it has ups and downs. You know, it’s like the stock market and the cardiogram, with the lines going up and down. He wants more effort, he wants more maturation, more deepening, more participation.

Historians will probably put the end of the transition to put it after a national victory. That is, if we manage to resolve our issue with Turkey. This will be a station, so from this station they will start counting differently.

But that’s not the case. This whole story has a timelessness. It is a constant effort, so these circles do not close. Change, mutate, mature. As I told you, Greece in 1974 with Greece in 2024 has nothing to do with. The problems were different. There was no migratory crisis, there were no wars and one we lost.

Beyond that, this world has found no other system that is better than democracy, with its thousand problems it has. When he finds it, he will send us a letter to learn it too.