George Papandreou Quotes
I think there is a heritage which I'm proud of, which is a fight for democracy, a fight for social justice, a fight for freedom. My grandfather went to jail or exile six times in his life, fighting for his principles for democracy, or for his country. And my father twice.
Papandreou, George. Interview by Fareed Zakaria. Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNN, 2 May 2010.
He was condemning a practice whereby some nations would have freedoms guaranteed by their constitutions or laws, but the totalitarian government would “suspend” the constitutional guarantees in times of “national emergencies.” Yew was in opposition at the time he made this famous statement. 30 years later when he was the Prime Minister, he had a different view. See {585201}.
In a particularly acrimonious House debate on the largest military appropriations bill in the history of the country, the speaker limited an opponent to 45 seconds to argue against the pending bill. Jacobs shouted his protest:
His way was to have a strong dictator, providing few human rights guarantees, and very limited civil liberties. With that to extol the virtues of those democratic elements, and state that this is the goal that his dictatorship was working towards. He believed that the poor education, the dominance of a single religion that is itself non democratic, a powerful military that was not under the control of civilian government, and the tribal nature of his society made it impossible to have a current full democracy. The government that replaced him was better but far from a full democracy. Only time and trial will determine whether or not he was right.
This is a classic Egyptian political technique. Egyptian political leaders espouse democratic values and endorse human rights, but control and regulate the actual exercise of rights so that “unacceptable” groups or people can never really assemble or protest. They make an application to demonstrate and find themselves arrested or “detained” so the Egyptians can say that no one is refused the right to assemble. Their permit was not denied.
George Andreas Papandreou is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011. He is currently serving as an MP for Movement for Change.
