September 7, 2011
At Amherst College’s Pratt Hall in 1970 and 1971, a handful of students from Greece spent countless hours decrying the military junta ruling their country.
George Papandreou, a bluejean-clad freshman whose father as prime minister had founded the country’s Socialist Party, would agree with Antonis Samaras, a sophomore living upstairs who favored blue blazers, that the regime had to go. Friends since high school in Athens, they were of one mind as they talked in the dormitory and over pizza in nearby South Hadley.
“Had there not been a junta, it’s possible George and Antonis wouldn’t have forged the friendship that they did,” said Philip Tsiaras, who lived in the dorm room next to Papandreou’s and is now an international artist. “They would have their political lines already drawn for them depending on who was in power in Greece.”
Today, those political lines couldn’t be more divisive. Papandreou, now prime minister, is guiding Greece through a debt upheaval whose aftershocks have spread throughout the European Union. Samaras, the leader of the political opposition, is trying to block the premier’s agenda every step of the way. The two will provide details of their economic agendas in the city of Thessaloniki over 10 days starting this weekend.
Samaras has set his New Democracy Party against both packages of austerity measures that the EU and international lenders required in return for new loans, the creation of a bailout fund and a bond-exchange and debt-buyback program. He hasn’t changed his position even after political pressure from leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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