ATHENS
weekly
Weekly supplement by Insider Publications • www.insider-publications.com • No 115 • Friday, September 16, 2016 BRAZILIAN DAY IN ATHENS
Athens Flying Week 2016
Israel Philharmonic
Banish post-Rio withdrawal symptoms at the city’s first Brazilian Day, Sept 18, from 5pm at Gazarte, with capoeira and Brazilian dance workshops, live music shows and DJ set by Kafka, plus acclaimed Brazilian composer Mu Chebabi. Free entrance. Voutadon 34, Gazi, gazarte.gr
One of Southern Europe’s most thrilling international aviation events takes flight (Sept 17-18), at Tanagra Aerodrome, with fighter jet displays, model aircraft makers, childrens’ play zone, and exhilarating aerobatic choreographies. Entry from €10-12 for adults, €4-5 for children, (VIP seating also available), tickets from viva.gr.
Hear the acclaimed Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and its legendary maestro Zubin Mehta, performing Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Schubert on Sept 17 and works by Richard Strauss with soprano Kristin Lewis on Sept 18. Tickets from €21-75 (€10 reduced), Athens Concert Hall, Vas Sofias & Kokkali, megaron.gr.
CITY LIFE
© Kostas Mpekas
Olga Kefalogianni: Populism. This is what has prevented us from being more cohesive during the crisis. Populist voices do not voice the common good, or socially just choices. They just appeal to individual insecurities…Greeks should be trained to understand and value the concept of the ‘common good’ What is the common good? Yiannis Simonides: Representative democracy has its traps, its fallacies, its imperfections. But there is no way to have direct democracy - we are several millions and here is where social media comes in – it is a place for information, but it could also be a venue for everybody to present what the common good is. Social media may be the most democratic gift we have.
Dinner debate on Democracy hosted by Insider Publications and Hotel Grande Bretagne
Democracy on Trial
Churchill said ’Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’ Is a flawed democracy better than no democracy at all? A few eminent Athenians gathered around a dinner table at the GB Roof Garden this week to exchange their views on the subject.
The Participants: Ambassador Nourredine Bardad-Daidj of Algeria, Ambassador Noel Kilkenny of Ireland, Former Minister of Tourism and Member of the Greek Parliament Olga Kefalogianni, Prof. Theodore Fortsakis, Member of the Greek Parliament, Socrates Now actor-producer Yannis Simonides, Curator Lee Wells, AlJazeera News Correspondent and Former Athens News Editor, John Psaropoulos, Head of International Media at Marketing Greece, Thrasy Petropoulos and Alberto Cano of the International New York Times. Here is an extract from the very stimulating exchange of ideas that followed. Hosted by Tim Ananiadis, Managing Director, Hotel Grande Bretagne and moderated by Sudha Nair-Iliades. Why should we value democracy? Socrates suggested that the principal flaw of democracy was inexperienced leaders combined with an uninformed electorate. Would you agree? Prof. Theodore Fortsakis: The value of democracy is the value of the human being. Different philosophers have studied different forms of governance, and democracy was not always recognized as the best regime. Aristotle or Plato did not recognize democracy as the best way to govern people. Since Renaissance, things changed as we recognized the value of the human being as the main interest of our society. Democracy is the only regime that allows people to express themselves in a free way, to undertake responsibility and to act as real human beings. And this is the essence of democracy. It means that we have stable institutions that respect the rule of law, that we respect human rights and we guarantee minimum social welfare to everybody - if not they are not in a position to exercise their rights. Nevertheless, democracy also has its flaws, as Socrates underlined - and Greece is a typical example of a country which has suffered from the erroneous decisions of inexperienced leaders.
John Psaropoulos with Prof. Theodore Fortsakis
John Psaropoulos: Many Greeks have come to doubt the depth of their democracy in the last six years. That is something the system can’t ignore. Politicians have to discuss that. I go back to something Dora Bakoyiannis said in 2007 that the problem with politics is that too often we don’t tell people the truth. Officials have admitted to not having told the truth over the last 40 years. So I don’t think we should be presenting ourselves as some paradigm of democracy, firstly. Secondly,
yes, street theatre exists and that gives the illusion of freedom but it is always organized street theatre. There is always a political goal behind it. During the first two or three years of the crisis, not only my editors at Al Jazeera, but also many journalists coming to Athens felt that there was some sort of spontaneous social revolution afoot and that it was only a question of time before Greeks stormed the capital and re-established democracy. What they didn’t understand was that these public demonstrations were the result of careful planning by left-wing political parties. I think it is a small miracle that parliamentary democracy survived at all in the past six years – I think we ought to give ourselves credit for that – we are still talking to each other instead of killing each other.
Yannis Simonides with H.E.Mr. Nourredine Bardad-Daidj
Ambassador Nourredine Bardad-Daidj: Following up on Socrates’ prescient insight, I think there is worse: a misinformed electorate with rulers who have a completely different agenda to their electoral promise. I have often been asked why during the Arab Spring uprising, Algeria was not affected. It was because we already had democracy. How we did it was by getting everyone on board. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was able to succeed in co-opting the public and the opposition, where other governments in the region have failed because Algerians still remember the brutal conflict throughout the 1990s, when government forces faced off against various extremist groups. For Algeria, democracy is not intellectual coquetry. It is a very important precept to maintain peace and stability. Yannis Simonides: If there was one democratic pre-requisite for Socrates, it was education for everybody. Of course, then it was only for some people – not for women or slaves. So is democracy an obsolete institution? Is it healthy? 48% of the Britons are supposedly uncomfortable with the vote of the majority – is democracy in the interest of the majority? What happens to the rest? Who cares? Shouldn’t democracy care?
going to make. But we go down a very slippery path if we start qualifying who the franchised should be or if we start dividing modern society into citizens and slaves. Olga Kefalogianni: Democracy is a system of political and social organization. It is a system of principles and core values and I believe that it is perpetually challenged. It is a very dynamic Olga Kefalogianni thing. We cannot say that we have achieved the level of democracy we want. Or there is one country or society that has achieved optimum democracy. Even more important than the debate on whether the electorate is informed or not, is whether they participate. Despite being a country that has traditionally voted in large numbers, in the most recent elections, voter turnout has been abysmal, just 50% vote. In Greece, it is not democracy that is under threat but social justice. It’s also become about the politics of truth. A recent article in the New York Times concluded that Donald Trump’s popularity was a result of ‘people not quite wanting to hear the truth.’ So instead of addressing people’s rationale and persuading them to think, what you are addressing is something emotional - their fears and insecurities. Lee Wells: As an artist, I’m interested in engaging the viewer in a dialogue and to provoke him into examining his insecurities. Greece will be hosting Documenta this week – the World Cup of art Lee Wells shows– what building do they choose as their headquarters? The old military police headquarters – is that a metaphor or a dialogue? I try to understand what is happening here with a multi-party system in juxtaposition to the US and its two-party system. How has social media re-defined democracy? Is it the new democracy? And how do you safeguard against the corruptive influence of trolls?
Acropolis view from the GB Roof Garden
Thrasy Petropoulos: There is an overload of information on social media. But it is a far more democratic way of accumulating information as long as the same core values hold. Part of the apathy towards politics is the lack of influence a voter believes he has in the final political decision-making process. And then there’s the issue of political deficit. In Greece, what difference would it make if it were one party or the other? The policy mix is likely to remain the same – which begets the question, why bother voting in the first place? Ambassador Noel Kilkenny: In Ireland, we took a huge interest in social media and the Brexit vote. What that whole Brexit debate showed us was that you had the one side putting forward facts backed up by argumentation and the other side putting out spurious issues and claims with little validation. But what was worrying was that the electorate saw them as two equally valid options. So the result was that the Brexit version got traction. If you ask the voters how many of them are actually engaged in social media, it is rising, but still very small. The overwhelming majority of those who actually cast a ballot are not active on social media.
H.E.Mr. Noel Kilkenny with Thrasy Petropoulos
So young people are voting a lot less than older people? Ambassador Noel Kilkenny: Yes and the real effect of social media is the absence of filters. We know that editorializing in a non-democratic state can mean repression. But you have trolls out there and the average voter doesn’t know how to distil all this information. We’ve had quite a few referenda ourselves –the most recent one was on the Lisbon Treaty. It went to the people and they said NO. We discovered that people were voting on issues that had nothing to do with the referendum. Referenda can be very dangerous – very democratic and very effective for a Yes or No answer - but when you have something very technical, it’s very difficult for people to comprehend what the underlying message to what they are saying yes or no to is - as was the case with the Greek referendum.
Olga Kefalogianni: It is the most effective and cost-effective means of reaching out to my constituents. With the government’s efforts to control mainstream media, its role is all the more relevant. The younger generation have substituted participation in the electoral process with engagement in social media. This is something that needs to be reversed because you need to be physically present at the polls. Is Democracy under threat? In a year in which we’ve seen populism and fringe politics taking centre stage in ‘established’ democracies - how do we salvage the democratic model? Alberto Cano: Burqini, Brexit, Trumpstyle politics are all part of a democratic matrix of different factors that may not be even related to each other. Democracy is in itself not the problem. We have Alberto Cano social and economic issues. It is a good thing we have democracy to cope with all those pressures because democracy only works under pressure. Otherwise it does not function. Ambassador Bardad-Diadj: I was posted in India, the world’s largest democracy, where elections can be a costly exercise. Getting almost a billion people to the polls is an expensive affair. Is it even worth it? Ambassador Kilkenny: In Europe, in the next three years, we are going to have democratic elections leading to results we may not be comfortable with – centreright to far-right parties may dominate. It will be democratic. But we may not like it. What do we do? Democracy is great so as long as it gives us the “right” outcome. What about when it gives us the “wrong” outcome? Olga Kefalogianni: The challenges of our times are huge: Terrorism and the debate between security and privacy. You have populism, you have the refugee crisis where you see the clash with individual rights. But I would not like to see the economic crisis be part of the debate on democracy because we are then seeing it through a distorted lens. Greece, despite the economic crisis, has a resilient Constitution. Our struggle is not one of protecting our democratic principles but of ensuring social justice. Prof. Theodore Fortsakis: In Greece, we have had difficult periods – dictatorships, riots, extremist parties who have gained ground during the crisis – but democracy is here, our institutions are in place and people act within the framework of these values. Democracy is the most precious value we should guarantee. We should not forget the problematic democracy we used to have for many decades. If we want to witness a resurrection of democratic values, we should learn from our mistakes, not repeat them.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Exhibition
Mosaic Odysseys One of our favourite Greek art expressions – the mosaic - gets an outing (Sept 9-18) at Mosaic Odysseys, Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, featuring 11 world-renowned British and Greek artists with contemporary works inspired by the great adventure of the Odyssey. Peiraios 206, 210.341.8550, mcf.gr/en.
Theater Piaf! Le Spectacle Another chance to see the “sold-out” musical tribute to France’s “Little Sparrow” Edith Piaf: a rags to riches audio-visual tour of the singer’s often tragic life, starring Anne Carrere, on October 6, 21.30 at Herodion Atticus, Dionysiou Areopagitou. Tickets from €20-70 from viva.gr or 13855.
Celebrate Full Moon Fest Have a last fling with summer at a stylish party to welcome the final full moon of the season at Island Club on the Athens Riviera, Friday, September 16. Entrance is 20€ with 1 Drink. Table reservations highly-recommended, 27th km, Athinon-Souniou, Varkiza, 210.965.3563, islandclubrestaurant.gr.
TV THIS WEEK American Horror Story 6
An anthology series that centers on different characters and locations, including a house with a murderous past, an insane asylum, a witch coven, a freak show, and an enigmatic hotel. Thursday at 23.30 on Fox
Tyrant 3
Barry does whatever he can to make sure Daliyah doesn’t kill herself. A rally for Leila at the University is interrupted by Maloof’s forces. The Army prepares for war against the Caliphate.Thursday at 22.40 on Fox Watch FOX and FoxLife on NOVA, OTE TV, Vodafone, CYTA
CINEMA THIS WEEK
Demolition
A successful investment banker struggles after losing his wife in a tragic car crash. He starts to rebuild, beginning with the demolition of the life he once knew. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Naomi Watts, Chris Cooper
John Psaropoulos: In the US, the founders of the Constitution defended against the tyranny of the majority through the electoral college system. On the question of education I couldn’t agree more – I see the job of a good journalist as an educator. We’re trying provide information that is very important in the decisions they’re Bridget Jones’s Baby
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The continuing mis-adventures of much-loved British publishing executive Bridget Jones as she enters her 40s and new romantic turmoil. With Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey