The Responsibilities of K Karamanlis in the Murder of Grigoris Lambrakis.

 

The Responsibilities of K Karamanlis in the Murder of Grigoris Lambrakis.

A few days ago was the anniversary of the murder of MP Grigoris Lambrakis on May 22, 1963, by paramilitary groups with the cooperation of the police. Who is responsible for this murder? A description of Greece at that time is enough to make clear to everyone the identity of those responsible.

From 1956, Greece was governed by the ERE party with Prime Minister K. Karamanlis (who had been designated as prime minister by the king with the consent of the Americans). Although the ERE statute provided for 9 Management Bodies, in the 8 years of the party's life, 6 never functioned (the General Assembly, the General Council, the Executive Committee, the Study Committees, the Economic Committee, and the Higher Disciplinary Council).

The functions of the 7th Body, the General Secretariat, were mostly carried out by public services (systematic exploitation of the corrupt political policy). The party leader (8th Body) and Prime Minister Karamanlis were the absolute rulers of the party (the statute lacks any provision for the election or re-election of the leader). The official organization system of the party was a simple facade, behind which the power of a man who had become the sole body of administration and decision-making of ERE was exercised.

The subordination of the Parliamentary Group (9th Body) was absolute They called it "the gang". Papaligouras, minister of the Karamanlis governments, recounts: "The cabinet had practically ceased to function and Karamanlis dictated all decisions to the interested ministers." The ERE used every means to maintain the advantages of power. There was a fusion of party and state. The state treasury was transformed into a tool for enriching party clients. The distribution of secret funds granted to many ministries "took on absurd proportions" (according to Union of the Centre investigations). The Security Forces, under the pretext of fighting communism, had practically turned into a kind of praetorian guard of the government party. Practically unchecked power had been granted to mere executive bodies. In the "policed democracy" (as that regime was successfully named), although fundamental freedoms had not been abolished, the Security Forces nullified a large part of them. Karamanlis further strengthened the police state by nesting within it parastate actors (a network of state services and state-fed fascist organizations), official state thugs (TEA, etc.), and party affiliates (EKOF). Social certificates of ideology determined who would find work and who would not. The prosecutor in the trial of the murder of Lambrakis, Pavlos Delaportas, summed up the entire system in one paragraph: "Today, a confluence of thieves, rapists, perjurers, and all kinds of criminals appears as the protector of social regimes, as the guardian of sacred and saints and as a guardian of law and order." In the "violence and fraud" elections of 1961, in which ERE implemented the "Pericles Plan," armed groups knocked on doors at night and warned: "Anyone who does not vote for ERE will be exiled." A characteristic of the fraud was the 218 registered guards who declared the same two-story house as their residence. The extrajudicial deviation that led to the "Pericles Plan" was decided immediately after the 1958 elections (when EDA emerged as the official opposition with 24%), in a meeting of Karamanlis with his associates in Kifissia. The Plan was completed by the Army, in a committee of the HNDGS, with the participation of the later dictator G. Papadopoulos and his associate Odysseas Angelis. Regarding all of the above, Karamanlis repeatedly said and wrote that he knew nothing. He only governed (although it was rumored that he doubted even that). When the investigation, following the murder, began to unravel the myth of the "disappeared" networks that had been woven since 1958, Karamanlis resigned and fled to Paris under the pseudonym "Triantafyllidis." Relatively recently in Parliament (2013), a "person above suspicion" attributed to Karamanlis "only political responsibilities" for the murder of Gr. Lambrakis and he was recognized as a modernizer and reformer (because he allegedly promoted Parliamentarism against the power of the Throne and the Army). The kind of parliamentary reform and modernization that Karamanlis was promoting gives us an idea of the Constitutional Reform proposed by ERE on 21/2/1963, which spoke of a government of emergency powers and included measures such as criminalizing speeches or the vote of the Members of Parliament in the Parliament, establishment of a Special Court to ban parties, etc., with the rationale that "the parliamentary machine has become an obstacle to meeting the demands of the times." Karamanlis, even after the dictatorship, spoke of a "governed instead of governing democracy" (Papadopoulos' "plaster," in other words). "The government and I had no interest in the murder," Karamanlis said. So, why the efforts to obstruct the investigations and cover up the crime? [Dispatch from the "government's forensic doctor for all jobs" Kapsaskis, with his ridiculous arguments (Lambrakis broke his head falling on the asphalt), intervention in the interrogations of the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court Kollias and a penalty/favor from the Minister of Justice when the interrogators accused him, attempted bribery of the 2 main witnesses by the coast guard officer Kamoutsi (who supposedly belonged to the part of the coast guard controlled by the government and did not know about the murder plan) with millions of drachmas (from his pocket?), also attempted bribery of the journalist Giorgos Romaios from Karamanlis' political office, and a bunch of others]. These are not called political responsibilities, but collaboration and cover-up and they have criminal responsibilities.

 

May 31, 2019

George Papanikolaou