Impossibility of Consensus

In autumn 1966 the State Department analysts reviewed Greek political situation and discerned three disturbing trends: factionalism, polarization and authoritarianism. The government of the defectors had lasted longer than it was expected. Fear of a Papandreou victory had prolonged conservative support for the Stefanopoulos cabinet. The central political issue was the timing of the election. The leader of the conservative National Radical Union (ERE) sought to go to the polls in the spring of 1967 at the latest in the belief that conservative leaning CU voters would desert Papandreou due to his radical stance. Conservative hardliners however, closely aligned to the Crown, were opposing Kanellopoulos's tactics and favoured the latest possible conduct of elections, in the hope that the self-exiled Karamanlis would be persuaded to re-enter Greek politics and replace Kanellopoulos as the leader of the conservatives. The CU for its part asked for immediate elections arguing that this would arrest polarization and the erosion of legitimacy of the Greek political system. The moderates of the party hoped as well that an early election would prevent Andreas Papandreou from consolidating his pre-eminence in the party. In this context the communist-led EDA was trying to pursue its platform for a popular front. Andreas Papandreou neither had supported nor denounced the front while his father precluded cooperation with the left.