Written by Akis Liantzouras
Before we light the candles for the fifty-something years of Greece’s Metapolitefsi, perhaps we should attempt something harder than yet another ceremony of remembrance. We should look directly at those who built it and ask whether they would recognise the democracy they left behind. Because 24 July 1974 was not merely a change of government. It was an act of national self-preservation. It was the moment when people divided by profound political, ideological and historical differences understood that first you save the house, and only then argue about the colour of its walls.
Konstantinos Karamanlis returned from Paris in the middle of the night to take charge of a country that resembled a minefield. Beside him stood Georgios Mavros, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Evangelos Averoff and Georgios Rallis: people carrying different histories but sharing a common sense of responsibility. Across from them stood the Left — Charilaos Florakis, Ilias Iliou, Babis Drakopoulos and Mikis Theodorakis — people who had paid for their ideas through prison, exile and exclusion. The legalisation of the Communist Party was not a partisan concession. It was the decision of a democracy mature enough not to fear its opponents; the moment the state decided that national reconciliation mattered more than revenge.
I often wonder what all of them would say if they walked today through the corridors of the Greek political system. They would see a democracy rich in institutions but poor in stature. A political class measuring success in likes, focus groups and algorithms rather than historical impact. A public conversation that produces hashtags instead of ideas. A Parliament that too often resembles a television panel rather than the place where competing visions for the country collide.
What is most disturbing, however, is not the erosion of the parties. It is the erosion of political stature. Greece seems governed by a generation of radical-centrist managers who believe the highest political virtue is to upset no one. They produce no ideology, assume no historic risk and inspire no one. They administer, measure, weigh and postpone. When society asks for answers about demographic collapse, institutional crisis, insecurity, economic stagnation, technological transition or the collapse of trust in institutions, they reply with communication packages, allowances and carefully engineered phrases that offend nobody and inspire nobody.
The irony is almost tragic. The generation of 1974 inherited a country wounded by dictatorship and believed democracy was a living promise that required courage to survive. Today’s political generation inherited the most stable democratic period in Greek history and managed to turn democracy into a procedure without passion, vision or — worst of all — faith. Citizens no longer feel that they participate. They feel that they watch.
Perhaps this is the great paradox of the Metapolitefsi. Those who built it were adversaries, yet they believed deeply in democracy. Today’s politicians all declare themselves democrats, yet rarely seem to believe democracy can still change the country’s fate. And when democracy loses its ability to generate hope, it does not die through coups. It dies more slowly, more quietly and more insidiously: through the mediocrity of those who manage it and the indifference of those who stop believing in it. That may be the real question left to us by 24 July — not whether democracy was restored then, but whether we are worthy of preserving it now.