Introduction

Abstract

John Ioannou is one of Greece’s best political cartoonists. Every Sunday the large-circulation daily Eleutherotypia (‘Freedom of the Press’) publishes a full-page illustrated political satire of Ioannou’s weekly and witty comment on Greek current affairs. In one of his stories, published on 11 September 1994, Ioannou portrays Andreas Papandreou, then Greece’s near-80-year-old socialist Prime Minister, on his flight to Thessalonica, capital of Macedonia. The city holds its 59th International Exhibition, and, according to tradition, the Prime Minister will deliver a speech on the state of the Greek economy. A journalist asks Papandreou for some preliminary remarks. Papandreou replies:

These things are well-known … What our country produces is national issues … We sell them abroad, and in turn get Delors financial assistance packages. We distribute these among contractors, and they hand out wages for diggings here and there — the so-called ‘great public works’. As soon as the Inland Revenue get a sniff of those incomes, they make a grab for a bit of the loot too … In short, this is our economy.

‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.’

William Shakespeare. Hamlet.