PASOK is back on our TV screens

It is widely known that in Greece politicians are afraid of political debates. The charismatic leaders of the first period after the restoration of democracy in 1974 (who largely drew their political capital from the pre-dictatorial, non-televised period) had to leave for the public to see the first televised debate in 1996 between PASOK leader Costas Simitis and New Democracy leader Miltiades Evert. Since then, their irregular conduct before the elections is characterized mainly by a frustration with the conditions in which they are held because they promote parallel monologues, with the impractical help of the journalists present. The most important element that emerges from a debate, which is the subsequent discussion about who was more persuasive with his or her arguments and presence, is usually sidelined by the "bigger picture" created by the inability of Greek politicians to...