Envious republicans

Everybody is entitled to a holiday. A Royal or a president, a few weeks away from daily routine are necessary for everyone. Well paid critics in the media or in politics are less generous, they try to sew dispute.

This holiday season in the Northern hemisphere saw two cases of envious reporting.

US president Barack Obama’s wife Michelle and daughter Sasha were were on a four-day visit and stayed at the five-star Villa Padierna, rated as one of the world's top 30 hotels, with 40 friends. The party has reserved 60 rooms. The First Lady went to the city of Granada and enjoyed the spectacular Alhambra Palace. Mrs Obama and her daughter also paid a visit to Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at their summer palace on the island of Majorca, a short flight from Marbella.
From the website of the Casa de Su Majestad el Rey: Sus Majestades los Reyes y Su Alteza Real la Princesa de Asturias, acompañados de la primera dama de los Estados Unidos de America, Michelle Obama y su hija, Sasha

Mrs. Obama left no doubt that this was a private tour at her own expenses. Fair enough and the Kingdom of Spain is worth more than one visit. She will certainly be welcome whenever she wants to return to the Iberian Kingdom.

Some 250 Spanish officers and military personnel protected the Obamas during their stay. They include police divers, bomb disposal experts and dog handlers. About 70 US Secret Service agents are also in Marbella, some of them dressed undercover as tourists.

US Republicans have criticised Mrs. Obama for taking a holiday in the Kingdom of Spain instead of visiting the Gulf of Mexico. While the US security staff was paid by the US taxpayers, the cost of the 250 Spanish security personnel was shouldered by the Spaniards, and despite the country’s dire financial situation there was not criticism about the unknown bill.

Had this happened in Australia, would the republicans be up in arms against the expenditure for a foreign tourist? Certainly not, if it was a family member of a foreign republican head of state. What would they have made of the second example.

This July the Australian Royal Family had a cruise around the Western Highlands and islands of Scotland on the Hebridean Princess, a converted ferry. The Queen has paid £300,000 out of her own pocket, but that did not cover the security surrounding her, including the protective shadowing of her vessel by a Royal Navy frigate and divers.

In August 1979 Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle, was killed when the Irish Republican Army blew up his boat.(Sinn Féin vice-president Gerry Adams said of Lord Mountbatten's death: “The IRA gave clear reasons for the execution.”) The Royal Family is still on many terror groups’ death list. In civilised countries security measures are paid by the public for ex-prime ministers like Tony Blair as well as for authors like Sir Salman Rushdie. Only the Royal Family is always under criticism, because of the cost to protect their lives.

Gerald Warner:

„ ... By an extraordinary coincidence that [amount of money] is precisely what the frigate would have cost if it had carried out the same exercises purely in theory, without the presence of the Queen to make them more focused and realistic. The only way to avoid costs would have been to put the ship in mothballs which, with our services currently so overstretched, would hardly be practical. Don’t forget the divers! snivel the critics. Right, so, Royal Navy divers should never venture into the water, on grounds of expense – is that the idea? Should our divers keep their flippers dry while any terrorist who can use a snorkel attaches limpet mines to the vessel carrying half of the royal family?
Or if al-Qaeda were to raid the ship and hold the royal family hostage, would that be less expensive?”

Imagine, the Royal Family had decided to take a holiday in Australia, just like Michelle Obama wanted her time off in the Kingdom of Spain. The republicans would be running amok, crying foul and murder over the cost for a couple of security officers who would have to be paid anyway, since in analogy to Gerald Warner, they would have cost the same amount sitting at stand-by.

Republicans – in the US and in Australia or in the UK for that matter – just play political games, and very cheap and obvious ones as well.

Royal Australian Navy Commander honoured by His Majesty, The King of Tonga

Commander Peter Thompson, RAN, is honoured by His Majesty, The King of Tonga, George Tupou V, by being appointed as an Officer of the Royal Military Order of Saint George, whilst HMAS Tobruk was in the capital city of the Kingdom of Tonga, Nuku 'alofa on Operation Samoa Assist.


Commander Peter Thompson, RAN (middle) and His Excellency, Dr Bruce Hunt, The Australian High Commissioner to the Kingdom of Tonga (left), talk with His Majesty, The King of Tonga, George Tupou V, in the King's Villa after the ceremony.

1973: Greek Referendum on the Country's Monarchy
Hardly any country has had so many referenda on their form of state than Greece. Some resulted in favouring the Monarchy, some gave the politicians’ republic the preference. On this day 35 years ago, the then ruling military junta ordered the country to accept the colonels' republic. What's hardly a surprise in a dictatorship, they got what they had asked for: A republic.

According to the official results, in the referendum of 29th July 1973 3,870,124 (78.4%) agreed with the military rulers to abolish the Monarchy, 1,064,300 (21.6%) courageously expressed their disapproval with the republic and remained loyal to King Constantine II, who has been living in exile since 1967. Greece had a population of 10 million, the junta registered less than 6 million voters. According to the official figures 4,934,424 took part in the referendum. Considering these figures the achieved majority is put in a different spot light.

King Constantine II and Queen Anne-Marie on 14th December 1967 on their way into exile after the King's attempted coup to restore democracy in Greece had failed.








The Mutiny of the Velos
1973 was a crucial year in Greek history. In May 1973 a wide-ranging anti-junta movement among the ranks of the mostly Royalist Navy was discovered and suppressed, just before its outbreak. On 25 May 1973, the destroyer Velos, under the command of Nikolaos Pappas, while participating in a NATO exercise and in order to protest against the dictatorship in Greece, anchored at Fiumicino, Italy, refusing to return to Greece. The captain and the officers had learned by radio that royalist naval officers had been arrested and tortured in Greece. Commander Pappas was a member of a group of democratic officers, loyal to their oath to the King and planning to act against the junta. Pappas knew the arrested officers and realised there was no further hope for a coup at that point.
Headline in a German newspaper on 29th May 1973: "Mutiny for the King was a strike against the King."

Nikolaos Pappas and 31 officers and crew disembarked and asked for political asylum, creating a world-wide interest for the situation in Greece. The failed Navy revolt demonstrated that even after six years of junta "normality", the opposition had not died off, and that it existed even amongst large parts of the armed forces, which were the regime's main internal supporter.

The US magazine Time wrote in its edition of 11th June 1973: "In the wake of the coup, there were reports that the regime had rounded up hundreds of civilians and military men who were suspected of being royalist partisans. Last week, Papadopoulos sacked his chief of the navy after sitting down to dinner with him the night before. The air force was also grounded for fear that dissident pilots would fly their planes to Italy, in a show of support for the coup.

"'He [the King] cooperated with all kinds of reactionaries, turned against the armed forces and behaved like a party leader of adventurists, fellow travelers, saboteurs and even murderers.' With those sharp words, Premier George Papadopoulos, in a ten-minute, nationwide broadcast, last week abolished the monarchy and appointed himself head of the new Greek Republic. He accused Constantine of supporting an abortive coup planned by royalist naval officers, which gave Papadopoulos an ideal excuse to extend the junta's heavyhanded rule and depose the King. Under the constitution that Papadopoulos promulgated in 1968, which provides that the King is titular head of state, last week's announcement that Greece had become a republic was patently illegal. But it did not come as much of a surprise. Originally, the colonels had used the throne as a way of giving their rule some illusion of legitimacy. King Constantine's refusal to return to Greece from exile in Rome until democracy was restored had long since made a mockery of that claim."
In June 1973 King Constantine declared in a press conference, that he would not accept Papadopoulos' act and would fight instead for the restoration of democracy in his home country.

A Decreed republic
The Navy’s royalist sympathies gave Georgios Papadopoulos the pretext he was looking for to assume total power in Greece. The Daily Telegraph wrote (1st June 1973): “Last week's abortive mutiny has apparently convinced Mr. Papadopoulos that the time was ripe to put paid to future plots in which the King is used as a rallying cry.”

On 1st June, Papadopoulos issued a decree declaring Greece a presidential republic, with himself as president. The act was widley criticised as illegal. To give his new putsch the air of legality, Papadopoulos ordered a referendum to be held on 29 July 1973. The defunct political parties and their leaders urged for a "No" as a sign of opposition to the regime, but the vote was tightly controlled by the junta, and the results were predictably favourable to the regime. (See results above).

Once again Time magazine: "Last month [it was actually April 1973], exiled former Premier Constantine Caramanlis, 66, issued a bitter broadside from Paris against the regime, calling for its resignation and the return of the King to oversee the restoration of democracy. … Many Greeks have mixed feelings about King Constantine, but the monarchy has traditionally been viewed as a symbolic support of democracy."

The referendum did not quieten the opposition, among which the royalists formed a large part: “The press [in Greece] has published anti-regime appeals, but has not been allowed to do so when these have come from influential sources. … The same applies to the appeals of the deposed King Constantine and retired military officers. One retired officer was recently jailed for sending a letter to a provincial paper in which he suggested that the monarchy should be restored.” (Weekly "To the Point", 8th September 1973).

Papadopoulos couldn’t enjoy his presidency for very a long time. In November 1973, the Athens Polytechnic uprising broke out. The student uprising is generally believed to have been spontaneous, started with purely student demands at first, and not orchestrated by any political groups in Greece. On 24th November 1973 he was toppled by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannides and arrested. Lieutnant General Phaedon Gizikis was declared president.

The Legacy of the 1973 Referendum
Observers from the very diversified Greek political spectrum may argue on many issues, but they agree on one point: The results of the 29th July 1973 referendum “were achieved by fraud and intimidation”(Panayotis Kanellopoulos, last royal Prime Minister in 1967), however, the legacy of dictator Georgios Papadopulos’ is still effecting Greek politics.

King Constantine II ascended to the Greek throne after the death of his father, King Pavlos I, on 6th March 1964.

"A king is a king unless he says he is no longer a king. Titles don't disappear but power and privelege can be taken away from them. Found in Wikipedia, posted by Charles, 4 October 2006