Prime Minister and The 4th of August Regime
After a disputed plebiscite, George II returned to take the throne in 1935. The elections of 1936 produced a deadlock between Panagis Tsaldaris and Themistoklis Sophoulis. The political situation was further polarized by the gains made by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). Disliking the Communists and fearing a coup, George II appointed Metaxas, then minister of war, to be interim prime minister on 13 April 1936, and the appointment was confirmed by the Greek parliament.
Widespread industrial unrest gave Metaxas justification to declare a state of emergency on August 4, 1936. With the king's support, he suspended the parliament indefinitely and suspended various articles of the constitution. In a national radio address, Metaxas declared that for the duration of the state of emergency, he would hold "all the power I need for saving Greece from the catastrophes which threaten her." The regime created as a result of this self-coup became known as "the 4th of August" after the date of its proclamation.
The regime's propaganda presented Metaxas as "the First Peasant", "the First Worker" and "the National Father" of the Greeks. Metaxas adopted the title of Arkhigos, Greek for "leader" or "chieftain", and claimed a "Third Hellenic Civilization", following ancient Greece and the Greek Byzantine Empire of the Middle Ages. State propaganda portrayed Metaxas as a "Saviour of the Nation" bringing unity to a divided nation.
Read more about this topic: Ioannis Metaxas
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, prime, minister, august and/or regime:
“If one had to worry about one’s actions in respect of other people’s ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“[T]he minister preached a sermon on Jonah and the whale, at the end of which an old chief arose and declared, “We have heard several of the white people talk and lie; we know they will lie, but this is the biggest lie we ever heard.””
—Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real “horror vacui.””
—J. August Strindberg (1849–1912)
“I always draw a parallel between oppression by the regime and oppression by men. To me it is just the same. I always challenge men on why they react to oppression by the regime, but then they do exactly the same things to women that they criticize the regime for.”
—Sethembile N., South African black anti-apartheid activist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 19, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)